Jamie Smith Hopkins stories from The Center for Public Integrity2018-11-19T19:52:10-05:00https://www.publicintegrity.org/node/15494/rssAs oil and gas exports surge, West Texas becomes the world's 'extraction colony'http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/22328The United States is producing more fossil fuels than ever and selling them to the rest of the world. Petroleum production;Oil sands;Price of oil;Pricing2018-10-15T12:49:43-04:002018-10-11T05:00:00-04:00Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsRachel Levenhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/rachel-levenKiah Collierhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/kiah-collierLowe's says it will stop selling deadly paint removershttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21803Retailer bows to consumer pressure after at least four deaths linked to paint strippers with methylene chloridePaint stripper;Woodworking;Chemistry;Visual arts;Stripper;Chloride;Jig-A-Loo2018-06-19T11:08:27-04:002018-05-29T14:16:17-04:00<p><strong>June 19</strong>: <em>This article has been <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/05/29/21803/lowes-paint-stripper#update">updated</a>.</em></p>
<p>Home-improvement giant Lowe’s is phasing out <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/05/10/21744/methylene-chloride-epa-regulation">paint-removal products with methylene chloride</a>, responding to petitions in the wake of deaths caused by the chemical.</p>
<p>The company’s decision, <a href="https://newsroom.lowes.com/inside-lowes/lowes-commitment-methylene-chloride-nmp/">announced today</a>, will get the products off store shelves by the end of this year. As their fumes build up in bathrooms, basements and other enclosed areas, they can kill: A Center for Public Integrity investigation in 2015 found that more than <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/05/10/21744/methylene-chloride-epa-regulation">50 people died since 1980 using methylene chloride</a> — often in paint strippers — for work or personal projects.</p>
<p>Since last year, at least four people have been found dead midway through projects in which they used such paint removers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had been slow-walking a would-be ban, proposed shortly before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. But earlier this month, the agency said it would push forward with a rule targeting the chemical, a turnaround after officials there came under pressure from members of Congress and survivors of recent victims.</p>
<p>Lowe’s has faced pressure as well. Relatives of Drew Wynne, 31, who died in October while removing paint from a walk-in refrigerator at his South Carolina coffee business, joined with consumer and environmental groups to press the company to stop selling <a href="https://saferchemicals.org/newsroom/grieving-parents-health-advocates-urge-lowes-to-pull-deadly-paint-strippers-from-store-shelves/">paint-stripper brands with methylene chloride</a>. Wynne purchased his product from Lowe’s, they said. The groups said more than 200,000 people signed petitions asking the company to take action.</p>
<p>Lowe’s, which already sells some paint removers without methylene chloride, said it is working with suppliers to get more alternatives on the shelves.</p>
<p>“We care deeply about the health and safety of our customers, and great progress is being made in the development of safer and more effective alternatives,” Mike McDermott, Lowe’s chief customer officer, said in a prepared statement.</p>
<p>Lowe’s said it also plans to stop selling paint removers with another chemical, N-Methylpyrrolidone, that has been linked to miscarriages and other harms to unborn children.</p>
<p>Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, an advocacy group that asked Lowe’s more than a year ago to take both types of paint strippers off the shelves, said in a statement that the retailer is the first “to take action on this critical consumer and worker safety issue.” The group urged other companies to follow suit.</p>
<p>“When facing federal inaction on vital issues facing the American public—some of which are matters of life or death—retailers have a responsibility and an opportunity to do right by their customers,” Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families’ Mike Schade said in a statement.</p>
<p><em><strong>(<a id="update" name="update">Update</a>, June 19, 10:38 a.m.:&nbsp;</strong>The Home Depot&nbsp;announced on June 18, 2018, that it would also stop selling <a href="https://corporate.homedepot.com/methylene-chloride">paint strippers containing methylene chloride</a> and&nbsp;N-Methylpyrrolidone by the end of 2018.)&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong>READ MORE:</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/05/10/21744/methylene-chloride-epa-regulation">Reversing course, the EPA will regulate a deadly paint stripper</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/29/21649/members-congress-epa-act-now-deadly-chemical">Members of Congress to EPA: Act now on deadly chemical</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/26/21626/epa-planned-ban-deadly-paint-stripping-chemical-will-it-follow-through">The EPA planned to ban a deadly paint-stripping chemical. Will it follow through?</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/01/12/20589/epa-wants-restrict-sometimes-deadly-paint-stripper-chemical">EPA wants to restrict sometimes-deadly paint stripper chemical</a></strong></p>
A customer browses through paint stripper options at a Lowe's store in Glen Burnie, Maryland in 2015.&nbsp;
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsReversing course, the EPA will regulate a deadly paint stripper http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21744A decision by the agency on paint removers containing methylene chloride was previously delayed. Paint stripper;Woodworking;Climate change policy in the United States;Manufacturing;Lead2018-05-10T15:17:38-04:002018-05-10T11:41:22-04:00<p><em>This story was updated at 3:17&nbsp;p.m. with additional interviews.</em><br />
<br />
In a surprise reversal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today it would <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-action-methylene-chloride">enact a rule</a> targeting a widely available type of paint remover that has killed people&nbsp;for decades — including at least four since last year.</p>
<p>It’s unclear whether the regulation would ban&nbsp;retail sales of these products, as the EPA proposed in the final days of the Obama administration. The agency would not clarify when asked. Today’s announcement was a turnabout for the EPA: Officials there said several weeks ago that they did not anticipate&nbsp;they would take final action on the issue this year, but they have come under increasing pressure from families who recently lost relatives and from <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/26/21626/epa-planned-ban-deadly-paint-stripping-chemical-will-it-follow-through">members of Congress</a>.</p>
<p>The products, paint removers containing methylene chloride, can kill on the spot as the chemical’s fumes build up. A 2015 Center for Public Integrity investigation, co-published with Slate, found that more than <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/21/17991/common-solvent-keeps-killing-workers-consumers">50 people died</a> since 1980 using methylene chloride — often in paint strippers — for work or consumer projects. To this day, Americans can purchase cans of these products at home improvement stores and other retailers, risking asphyxiation or a heart attack if they use it in enclosed areas.</p>
<p>At least four men died while the agency was deciding whether to enact the proposed ban, <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/26/21626/epa-planned-ban-deadly-paint-stripping-chemical-will-it-follow-through">dragging out the process</a> rather than acting swiftly — part of a pattern of <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/02/16/21572/epa-reform-means-giving-industry-what-it-wants">deregulatory decisions</a> by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. But on Tuesday, families of two of the men killed in recent months got a sit-down meeting with Pruitt. The mother of a third joined them for meetings with multiple members of Congress or their staffs this week.</p>
<p>Brian Wynne, whose brother Drew, 31, died using the product to refinish a floor in his <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/business/unlike-most-cities-charleston-has-added-businesses-since-the-recession/article_35419f2c-f201-11e6-b0aa-f3115ed9c63f.html">business’ walk-in refrigerator</a> in October, said senators and congressmen from both parties are helping push for action. Wynne was among the group that talked to Pruitt at EPA headquarters.</p>
<p>“I want to see that they’re going to do what they proposed,” Wynne said. “I’m not seeing the word ‘ban’ out there, and I want to see a ban. But we remain cautiously optimistic.”</p>
<p>Faye Graul, executive director of the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, a trade group whose members include makers of methylene chloride, said she too has “absolutely no idea” what the EPA intends to do — or how quickly it will act.</p>
<p>“It’s very vague,” she said.</p>
<p>Graul and others in the industry have said that methylene chloride is more effective than the alternatives and should not be banned. The solvents alliance petitioned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to approve stronger warning labels for the products instead — a move that occupational-safety experts have said is not sufficient to protect lives.</p>
<p>In today’s <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-action-methylene-chloride">announcement</a>, the EPA said it would “shortly” send the methylene chloride rule to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, a gatekeeper for new regulations.</p>
<p>“EPA is working diligently … to ensure the safety of existing chemicals,” the agency said.</p>
<p>However, the EPA did not specify whether its rule would include restrictions on another chemical common in paint removers, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/risk-management-n-methylpyrrolidone-nmp">N-Methylpyrrolidone, known as NMP</a>. The agency’s <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/01/12/20589/epa-wants-restrict-sometimes-deadly-paint-stripper-chemical">original proposal</a> suggested either banning NMP in paint strippers or requiring lower amounts of the chemical in mixtures because it is linked to miscarriages and other harms to unborn children.</p>
<p>“If the NMP products stay on the shelf, they’ll replace the methylene chloride products, and that’s simply replacing one set of health risks with another,” said Liz Hitchcock, acting director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, an advocacy group.</p>
<p>Her group, along with the <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/05/10/critical-blanks-in-epas-methylene-chloride-announcement-need-to-be-filled-in-if-it-is-to-be-health-protective/">Environmental Defense Fund</a> and the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/daniel-rosenberg/needless-deaths-toxic-solvents-paint-strippers">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>, is pressing both the EPA and retailers to get the products off shelves.</p>
<p>The most recent publicly announced death from a methylene chloride paint stripper occurred in February. Joshua Atkins, 31, was refinishing part of his BMX bicycle when he succumbed to the fumes, his mother wrote <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF18/20180426/108218/HHRG-115-IF18-20180426-SD030.pdf">in a letter</a> to key officials on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Lauren Atkins said her son was visiting her in Pennsylvania at the time, and she found him slumped by the paint-remover can. Her anguish only grew as she read about methylene chloride’s tortured history.</p>
<p>“I learned that family after family across the country had lost loved ones to this chemical,” she wrote. “I learned that the Environmental Protection Agency had proposed banning it in paint strippers but hadn’t followed through. I learned that advocacy organizations had urged top retailers to stop selling this deadly chemical but they had refused.”</p>
<p>Wendy Hartley’s 21-year-old son, Kevin, died on the job last year while using a methylene chloride paint remover to refinish a bathtub. Like Wynne, Hartley was at the Pruitt meeting this week. She wants to make sure no one else dies.</p>
<p>“This product does not need to be on store shelves. It does not need to be in consumers’ hands. It needs to be banned,” said Hartley, of Nashville, Tennessee. “I don’t know why it hadn’t been banned before.”<br />
<br />
<strong>READ MORE:</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/29/21649/members-congress-epa-act-now-deadly-chemical">Members of Congress to EPA: Act now on deadly chemical</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/26/21626/epa-planned-ban-deadly-paint-stripping-chemical-will-it-follow-through">The EPA planned to ban a deadly paint-stripping chemical. Will it follow through?</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/21/17991/common-solvent-keeps-killing-workers-consumers"><strong>Common solvent keeps killing workers, consumers</strong></a></p>
Paint strippers containing methylene chloride line shelves in home-improvement stores across the country.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsMembers of Congress to EPA: Act now on deadly chemicalhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21649People keep dying while using paint strippers with methylene chloride. The EPA is slow-walking a proposed ban.Environment;Environmental policy in the United States;United States Environmental Protection Agency;Counterculture of the 1960s;Toxic Substances Control Act;Environment of the United States;Environmental protection;Regulation of chemicals;Environment Protection Authority;Natural environment2018-03-30T09:53:19-04:002018-03-29T16:35:08-04:00<p>South Carolina’s two U.S. senators and one of its congressmen are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop delaying a decision to largely ban a toxic chemical in paint removers — calling the proposal an “urgent matter” after the death of a constituent last year.</p>
<p>The letter, sent to the EPA last week and made public today by consumer advocacy groups,&nbsp;was&nbsp;signed by U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, all Republicans. The lawmakers expressed alarm that more than 50 people have died&nbsp;since the 1980s while using the chemical methylene chloride, a fact <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/21/17991/common-solvent-keeps-killing-workers-consumers" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">uncovered by the Center for Public Integrity in a 2015 investigation</a>.</p>
<p>More have died in the two-and-a-half years&nbsp;since then, including Drew Wynne, 31, a small business owner in Charleston, S.C.</p>
<p>“Given the apparent danger of this chemical, we urge the [EPA] Secretary to immediately and fully address the already identified risks of methylene chloride … and prevent any further harm from coming to the American public,” the three members of Congress said in the letter.</p>
<p>In an email&nbsp;to the Center for Public Integrity, the EPA said it would “respond to the letter through appropriate channels.” The agency did not comment further.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/26/21626/epa-planned-ban-deadly-paint-stripping-chemical-will-it-follow-through"><strong>&gt;&gt; Read the full story:&nbsp;The EPA planned to ban a deadly paint-stripping chemical. Will it follow through?</strong></a></p>
<p>The EPA spent years delving into the hazards of methylene chloride to determine whether restrictions were necessary. In mid-January 2017 — in the final days of the Obama administration — the agency proposed&nbsp;to ban sales of methylene chloride paint strippers to consumers and most other users.</p>
<p>But in December, while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-releases-annual-regulatory-plan" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">promoting</a>&nbsp;its deregulatory efforts, the&nbsp;Trump administration&nbsp;EPA&nbsp;<a href="https://resources.regulations.gov/public/custom/jsp/navigation/main.jsp" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">downgraded</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;would-be ban from “Proposed Rule” to “Long-term Action.” The agency said in an emailed statement to the Center for Public Integrity that officials “felt that more time was needed to consider how best to analyze and address any risks from these chemicals.”</p>
<p>EPA officials&nbsp;did not answer questions about how long this work would take or&nbsp;whether the agency still intended to finalize the proposal.&nbsp;The European Union, by contrast,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/europe/euronews/dossiers/dichloromethane.htm" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">pulled</a> methylene chloride paint strippers from general use in 2011.</p>
<p>Methylene chloride is an anesthetic. At high doses, it&nbsp;knocks victims out,&nbsp;stopping&nbsp;their&nbsp;breathing.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>It&nbsp;can also trigger heart attacks in smokers and people&nbsp;with certain health conditions because&nbsp;the chemical&nbsp;turns into carbon monoxide in the body.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>And research links it&nbsp;to some long-term health problems, including cancer.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Wynne&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mcalister-smith.com/obituaries/Drew-Woolverton-Wynne?obId=2639538" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">died</a>&nbsp;in October&nbsp;as he was&nbsp;refinishing a floor&nbsp;in his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/business/unlike-most-cities-charleston-has-added-businesses-since-the-recession/article_35419f2c-f201-11e6-b0aa-f3115ed9c63f.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">new business</a>&nbsp;with a methylene chloride&nbsp;paint stripper&nbsp;he bought from Lowe’s,&nbsp;his family said.</p>
<p>Months before his death — in February of that year —&nbsp;Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a consumer advocacy group,&nbsp;<a href="http://saferchemicals.org/sc/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/saferchemicals.org_letter_to_lowes_paint_strippers_chemicals_2.14.17.pdf" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">sent Lowe’s a letter</a> warning&nbsp;of the&nbsp;products’ dangers&nbsp;and&nbsp;urging&nbsp;the&nbsp;home-improvement retailer&nbsp;to stop selling them.</p>
<p>Wynne’s parents joined with Safer Chemicals and other advocacy groups today to call on the EPA to act and to press Lowe’s to&nbsp;take methylene chloride products off its shelves.</p>
<p>“Our family suffered an unimaginable loss,” said his mother, Cindy Wynne. She said the family decided to focus on the effort because&nbsp;to them,&nbsp;the chemical presents exactly the sort of&nbsp;unreasonable risk from which the EPA is supposed to protect Americans.</p>
<p>Lowe’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company said in a recent email that it is “committed” to nearly doubling the number of methylene chloride-free paint strippers it sells by the end of the year. But it did not address whether it plans to phase out sales of products that contain the chemical.</p>
<p><strong>READ MORE:</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/02/16/21572/epa-reform-means-giving-industry-what-it-wants">For the EPA, ‘reform’ means giving industry what it wants</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/01/29/21492/most-epas-pollution-estimates-are-unreliable-so-why-everyone-still-using-them">Most of the EPA's pollution estimates are unreliable. So why is everyone still using them?</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/11/09/21275/behind-scenes-look-scott-pruitts-dysfunctional-epa">A behind-the-scenes look at Scott Pruitt's dysfunctional EPA</a></strong><br />
&nbsp;</p>
Removing paint using a paint stripper.&nbsp;
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsThe EPA planned to ban a deadly paint-stripping chemical. Will it follow through?http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21626The EPA is slow-walking a proposed ban on a paint-stripping chemical that continues to kill people.Environment;Environmental policy in the United States;United States Environmental Protection Agency;Counterculture of the 1960s;Environment of the United States;Natural environment2018-03-29T16:52:14-04:002018-03-26T05:00:00-04:00<p>It might be surprising to learn that simply removing paint could be fatal, but the key ingredient in many paint-stripping products has felled dozens of people engaged in this run-of-the-mill task. In the waning days of the Obama administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/01/12/20589/epa-wants-restrict-sometimes-deadly-paint-stripper-chemical">proposed</a> to largely ban paint strippers containing the chemical methylene chloride so they would no longer sit on store shelves, widely available for anyone to buy.</p>
<p>What’s happened since should be no shock to close observers of the Trump administration's pattern of <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/02/16/21572/epa-reform-means-giving-industry-what-it-wants">regulatory rollbacks</a>. The EPA, after hearing from both Americans in support of a ban and companies opposed to it, pushed back its timeline for finishing the rule to an unspecified date, saying it needed more time to weigh the issue.</p>
<p>Consumer advocates fear the proposed rule has been effectively shelved, even as people continue to die while using methylene chloride paint strippers on bathtubs and other items — including at least <a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail?id=96630.015">three</a> <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2018-03-21/pdf/2018-05580.pdf?utm_campaign=subscription%20mailing%20list&amp;utm_source=federalregister.gov&amp;utm_medium=email">last</a> <a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail?id=95243.015">year.</a></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/03/29/21649/members-congress-epa-act-now-deadly-chemical">UPDATE:&nbsp;Members of Congress to EPA: Act now on deadly chemical</a></strong></p>
<p>“There literally are bodies stacking up,” said Erik Olson, who directs the health program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. If the EPA won’t act on a chemical that’s undisputedly killing people, he said, “what are they going to act on?”</p>
<p>The NRDC is among the advocacy groups that plan to intensify their efforts to get these products off shelves another way — by ratcheting up pressure on home-improvement retailers such as Lowe’s and the Home Depot to stop selling them. Lowe's said in an email to the Center for Public Integrity that it is working with suppliers on alternatives and is “committed”&nbsp;to nearly doubling the number of methylene chloride-free paint strippers it sells by the end of the year, to seven total.</p>
<p>A doctor who serves as a Maryland legislator, meanwhile, wants his state to institute the ban the EPA hasn’t finalized. And California regulators are working on a proposed rule that would require manufacturers to look for safer alternatives to methylene chloride in paint strippers. (Some such options already are on the market but don't sell well, manufacturers say, because they don't work as quickly.)</p>
<p>Even if these efforts bear fruit, they represent a patchwork approach that Congress seemed intent on avoiding when it amended the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016. That legislation gave the EPA clear authority to ban chemicals presenting an “unreasonable risk” to health or the environment.</p>
<p>Often, chemical harms are hard to grasp because they’re not immediate. But methylene chloride, which <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/fact-sheet-methylene-chloride-or-dichloromethane-dcm-0">research suggests</a> carries risks of cancer and other long-term health problems, can also kill on the spot. It’s been linked to more than 50 deaths in the U.S. since 1980, a 2015 Center for Public Integrity <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/21/17991/common-solvent-keeps-killing-workers-consumers">investigation</a> found — among them a few consumers and a wide variety of workers on the job. Teenagers. A mother of four. A 62-year-old man. An Iraq War veteran.</p>
<p>Using the product in enclosed areas, where fumes build up, puts people at risk of asphyxiation because methylene chloride is an anesthetic at high doses — knocking victims out and stopping them from breathing. Because it turns into carbon monoxide in the body, it can also trigger heart attacks in smokers and people with certain health conditions.</p>
<p>“It’s too toxic to use indoors,” said Dr. Robert Harrison, an occupational medicine physician at the University of California, San Francisco.</p>
<p>Over the decades, methylene chloride — also called dichloromethane — has struck down people removing paint or other coatings in bathrooms, tanks, basements, even in a church baptismal pool. The public appears mostly unaware of the danger. Clerks in hardware stores didn't seem to know, a California agency found in a <a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/OHB/CDPH%20Document%20Library/MeClRetailSurvey.pdf">2013 survey</a>. But experts linked the chemical to deaths as far back as the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/76-138b.pdf">1940s</a>. Criticism that the EPA hadn’t done something began in the <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~dshuster/MeCl/MeCl%20Tox%20Refs/Stewart_1976.pdf">1970s</a>, in the agency’s early years.</p>
<p>The European Union <a href="http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/europe/euronews/dossiers/dichloromethane.htm">pulled</a> methylene chloride paint strippers from general use in 2011. When the EPA <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/prepublicationcopy_paintremovers_nprm_2017-01-12assigned.pdf">proposed</a> a rule in mid-January 2017, it wanted to ban sales to consumers and most other users.</p>
<p>The proposal was years in the making. It came over the sustained objections of paint-stripper manufacturers and their trade groups, which argued that job losses would follow. In 2016, after the EPA’s work on its proposed rule was well underway, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance <a href="https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=CPSC_FRDOC_0001-0936">petitioned</a> the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to strengthen the products’ warning labels — then argued last year that this obviated the need for sales restrictions on the “most efficient and cost-effective paint remover products.”</p>
<p>“We certainly recognize that some people have been harmed when using methylene chloride without the appropriate safeguards, and we are committed to being a part of the solution,” Faye Graul, executive director of the alliance, said at a recent legislative hearing in Maryland.</p>
<p>The group, speaking on behalf of methylene chloride manufacturers and users, also said in comments on EPA’s proposed rule that the agency failed “to take into account the documented greater flammability risk posed by alternative products.”</p>
<p>Benzyl alcohol, recommended by <a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/OHB/HESIS/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Paint-Removal-Methods.pdf">some</a> state <a href="http://www.lni.wa.gov/Safety/Research/Files/MCHazAlertBenzylAlcoholAlternative.pdf">agencies</a> as a safer option for paint stripping, poses what the National Fire Protection Association calls a “fairly insignificant” fire hazard. The EPA noted in its proposal that methylene chloride is often mixed with flammable solvents in paint strippers on the market.</p>
<p>The EPA also considered whether better instructions would be enough to render methylene chloride safe. But dozens of studies “found that consumers and professionals do not consistently pay attention to labels for hazardous substances,” the agency said in its proposed rule, adding that proper safety precautions for methylene chloride are too complex for most users to successfully carry out.</p>
<p>In December, however, while <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-releases-annual-regulatory-plan">trumpeting</a> its deregulatory efforts, the EPA <a href="https://resources.regulations.gov/public/custom/jsp/navigation/main.jsp">changed</a> the categorization of its would-be ban from “Proposed Rule” to “Long-term Action.” The agency said in an emailed statement&nbsp;last week that officials “felt that more time was needed to consider how best to analyze and address any risks from these chemicals.”</p>
<p>In fact, the EPA has done that already — as part of its original proposal. Asked for an estimate on how long additional work on the rule would take and whether the agency still intended to finalize the proposal, the EPA did not respond.</p>
<p>Maryland Delegate Clarence Lam, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health physician with a specialty in public and occupational health, saw the EPA’s handling of this chemical as a call to action. In February the Democrat sponsored a bill to ban methylene chloride paint strippers in his state. The legislation isn’t going anywhere this legislative session, but he’s hopeful about its chances next year.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think further risk assessments needed to be done,” Lam said. “This chemical probably should have been banned long ago.”</p>
<p>Industry representatives testifying against his bill argued that a ban would be premature because the EPA is on the job. They pointed not to the languishing proposed restrictions but to a separate toxics review the agency is undertaking. Methylene chloride is one of the targeted chemicals.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>
<p>But relying on that effort to get action on paint strippers could delay restrictions for years because it’s an opportunity for the agency to retrace all the steps it already completed, said Liz Hitchcock, who heads Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a group that works to get toxic substances out of products.</p>
<p>“In the absence of EPA taking action, we are urging — and definitely increasing our efforts to persuade — the largest home-improvement retailers to take action on their own,” she said, and get “these dangerous products off their store shelves.”</p>
<p><strong>READ THE BACKSTORY:</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/21/17991/common-solvent-keeps-killing-workers-consumers">Common solvent keeps killing workers, consumers</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/01/12/20589/epa-wants-restrict-sometimes-deadly-paint-stripper-chemical">EPA wants to restrict sometimes-deadly paint stripper chemical</a></strong></p>
Paint strippers containing methylene chloride line shelves in home-improvement stores across the country.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsSunshine State lags on solar power, doubles down on natural gashttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21311The Sunshine State hardly taps the sun at all for its electricity. What it relies on instead poses risks to Florida&#039;s future.Sustainable energy;Energy;Physical universe;Florida Power & Light;NextEra Energy;Solar power;Solar power in Florida;Orlando Utilities Commission2018-02-08T13:52:51-05:002017-12-11T05:00:00-05:00<p>VERO BEACH, Fla.—The irony is rich. The Sunshine State taps the sun for less than half a percent of its electricity while making two-thirds with natural gas — a fuel that Florida must pipe in from other states.</p>
<p>Many have called this a risky bet. A coastal state already suffering punishing effects of global warming shouldn’t keep building power plants that pump even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the Sierra Club warned. Natural gas prices are low now but will inevitably wallop customers down the road, the Florida Industrial Power Users Group predicted. As far back as a dozen years ago, when gas supplied less than 40 percent of the state’s electricity, then-Gov. Jeb Bush <a href="http://staugustine.com/stories/121505/sta_3519252.shtml">said</a> utilities needed to stop depending so heavily on it.</p>
<p>But Florida’s power providers and their state regulators haven’t reconsidered their strategy. In fact, they’re doubling down on it.</p>
<p>More gas-fired electricity generation is under construction or planned in this state than in all but four others, U.S. Energy Information Administration records show. The building boom includes not only these plants but also a hotly contested tri-state <a href="http://www.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/south-georgia-pipeline-fight-turns-into-battle-over-eminent-domain/F1YZCOK0nFLn0Fg7dCsnCP/">pipeline</a> to feed them. The new construction follows a 15-year surge in gas-fueled electricity production in Florida that topped the nation, outstripping even major gas producers such as Texas and Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Never in its history has the industry’s key regulator, the state Public Service Commission, rejected a utility gas plant. The agency has repeatedly raised concerns about increasing reliance on gas, but its actions have moved the state further in that direction.</p>
<p>Now, even as they’re finally accelerating solar development, Florida’s electric utilities still expect to construct more than twice as many new megawatts powered by gas in the next decade as by the sun. Near Vero Beach on Florida’s east coast, this tug-of-war is already on display.</p>
<p>On land next to citrus groves, workers are installing more than 300,000 panels for a new Florida Power &amp; Light <a href="https://www.fpl.com/clean-energy/pdf/indian-river-fact.pdf">solar site</a>, one of eight the utility has under construction. Together, they’ll nearly triple FPL’s solar-powered portfolio. But roughly 20 miles west, the company is building a gas-fired plant — among the three biggest planned nationwide — that will power far more homes than all those solar sites combined.</p>
<p>The Florida power users group, representing large industrial electric customers, was among those trying to convince the Public Service Commission two years ago that the $1.2 billion-dollar Okeechobee gas plant wasn’t necessary. Solar would be a cheaper, smarter alternative, the group argued.</p>
<p>“The proverbial ‘You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind,” Jon C. Moyle Jr., the group’s attorney, <a href="http://www.floridapsc.com/library/filings/2015/07662-2015/07662-2015.pdf">said</a> at a hearing.</p>
<p>FPL, the largest Florida electric utility, said falling costs are now making solar competitive and this power source should rise to 4 percent of the company's electricity mix by 2023. That’s a significant hike. But it falls far short of top solar utilities such as Pacific Gas &amp; Electric in California, already at <a href="https://www.pge.com/pge_global/local/assets/data/en-us/your-account/your-bill/understand-your-bill/bill-inserts/2017/november/power-content.pdf">13 percent</a> last year.</p>
<p>Gas remains key to FPL's plans. Its switch from oil and coal over several decades has been an unalloyed positive, bringing cheaper electric bills, cleaner air and fewer climate impacts than many other power providers, said Matt Valle, FPL’s vice president of development.</p>
<p>“We’re completely unapologetic about making that shift,” he said.</p>
<p>But gas plants developed in Florida haven’t simply displaced dirtier fuels. They’re also serving growing areas or replacing older gas plants, expanding the reach and lifespan of fossil fuels in a region especially <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2961">vulnerable</a> to their side effects.</p>
<p>Already, coastal communities such as Miami Beach are <a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-beachs-400-million-sea-level-rise-plan-is-unprecedented-but-not-everyone-is-sold-8398989">spending</a> millions <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article183336291.html">of dollars</a> raising roads and erecting pumps to combat flooding from sea-level rise. September’s Hurricane Irma wreaked billions in damages after gaining strength in an abnormally warm ocean. Local officials face difficult choices as they try to tackle threats that climate-fueled changes pose to needs as basic as drinkable water and flushable toilets.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Florida’s three largest planned gas projects — two plants under construction and one plant FPL aims to rebuild — would pump out roughly 9 million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide per year over their decades-long operating lives, according to the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, which promotes cost-effective decarbonization. That’s the climate <a href="https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator">equivalent</a> of building two average-size coal plants. <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/business/21702493-natural-gass-reputation-cleaner-fuel-coal-and-oil-risks-being-sullied-methane">Leaks</a> of the potent climate-warmer methane from infrastructure feeding the new projects will increase the emissions hit.</p>
<p>Florida has other options for keeping the lights on. But the path it’s taking is a profitable route for its investor-owned utilities. The Public Service Commission keeps obliging them.</p>
<p>The state wouldn’t need so much gas if it prioritized energy efficiency to avoid expensive new power plants. But energy conservation costs Florida utilities money because they sell less power. Three years ago, the Public Service Commission cut conservation goals by 90 percent after the utilities argued they were no longer economical. This year, a national energy-efficiency nonprofit, comparing the largest electric utilities on conservation efforts, <a href="http://aceee.org/sites/default/files/publications/researchreports/u1707.pdf">ranked</a> Florida’s among the worst.</p>
<p>Rooftop solar is another alternative. The state could offset nearly half its electricity needs this way, according to a 2016 federal <a href="http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/65298.pdf">analysis</a>. But that too would <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article17474102.html">threaten</a> utilities’ profits because they don’t own those panels or the resulting power — their customers do. In 2014, the companies <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/florida-regulators-meet-to-decide-future-of-energy-efficiency-and-solar/2207845">convinced</a> the Public Service Commission to ax the state’s solar rebate program. Last year, they spent more than $20 million promoting a purportedly pro-solar ballot amendment <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/endorsements/fl-endorse-no-on-amendment-1-solar-20160930-story.html">widely</a> <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article113449438.html">panned</a> as precisely the opposite.</p>
<p>Even without more conservation or solar, the state could have ensured that utilities build only those power plants Florida needs. But when weighing FPL proposals for projects in recent years, the Public Service Commission dismissed arguments from customer advocates that the company's own figures showed it already had plenty of extra power and was focused instead on increasing profits. FPL said it needed the plants for reliability, and the agency agreed.</p>
<p>The commission said it carefully weighs all its decisions to balance customers’ and utilities’ interests. Its deputy executive director for technical matters, Mark Futrell, said commissioners have seen value in — for instance — replacing old gas plants with more efficient new ones requiring less fuel for the same amount of energy.</p>
<p>“These things are considered fairly,” he said.</p>
<p>But the watchdog group Integrity Florida concluded in a recent <a href="http://files.constantcontact.com/d9f43dd5201/c0fa3602-ecfb-4031-b9a3-f69cd8b79114.pdf?ver=1506884568000">report</a> that the system is effectively rigged in favor of the companies. Floridians representing consumers, businesses, environmental interests and state government echoed that finding in nearly 40 interviews with the Center for Public Integrity. They pointed to the millions of dollars the major utilities spend on campaign contributions that flow to state officials, many with a say over appointments to the five-commissioner agency, and the 96 lobbyists working on those companies’ behalf.</p>
<p>“The power the utility industry has . . . is enormous,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican who served in the state Legislature for two decades, “and anyone that tries to tell you differently is lying.”</p>
<h4>The natural-gas state</h4>
<p>The story of natural gas in Florida is also a story of FPL, which serves roughly half the state’s customers. The company, based in Juno Beach, started down this road to wean itself off oil. Then natural-gas prices jumped more than <a href="https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9190us3M.htm">fivefold</a> in the U.S. between early 1999 and mid-2008, with some of that increase ending up in utility bills.</p>
<p>In 2004, as FPL again sought to pass on higher fuel costs to customers, its officials <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20041029005348/en/Continued-High-Oil-Gas-Prices-Prompt-FPL">said</a> they would diversify their electricity generation to blunt such swings.</p>
<p>Instead, FPL doubled its reliance on natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing — fracking — unlocked gas from shale, and that supply rush tanked prices beginning in 2009. Suddenly gas looked like a smart choice. Fuel diversity, not so much.</p>
<p>FPL said its strategy has saved consumers $8.6 billion in fuel costs and prevented 108 million tons of carbon emissions since 2001.</p>
<p>Its residential customers pay 19 percent less for each kilowatt-hour of electricity than do average Americans, according to federal figures for 2016. If the Obama-era Clean Power Plan were in effect, FPL said it would already be in compliance far ahead of schedule — with coal just 3.5 percent of its mix and <a href="http://newsroom.fpl.com/2017-05-22-FPL-files-plans-to-shutter-third-coal-fired-power-plant-and-continue-modernizing-its-generation-fleet-cutting-emissions-and-generating-millions-in-customer-savings">falling</a>, its rate of carbon emissions is 30 percent better than the national average. Even replacing old gas plants with new ones substantially reduces those emissions, FPL said.</p>
<p>What upsets critics isn’t the shift to gas, but the extent of it — and that FPL and other Florida utilities are still adding gas plants. The electric grid covering most of the state is on track by 2021 to have the <a href="http://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_SPOD_11142017_Final.pdf">largest</a> share of gas generation among all the U.S. and Canadian regional grids overseen by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory body. This high reliance carries risks, the organization noted.</p>
<p>Florida utilities trying to protect against one risk — additional price spikes — have lost more than <a href="http://www.floridapsc.com/library/filings/2017/06906-2017/06906-2017.pdf#search=billion">$6 billion</a> in the last 15 years in hedging bets gone bad, according to Public Service Commission filings. Customers shouldered that cost. Protecting against another danger — supply disruption — is one reason utilities said they needed the new Sabal Trail pipeline, upsetting out-of-state <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/07/17/20982/natural-gas-building-boom-fuels-climate-worries-enrages-landowners">property owners</a> whose land it crossed.</p>
<p>Past governors called for more renewable energy. Bush, a Republican who served from 1999 to 2007, <a href="http://staugustine.com/stories/121505/sta_3519252.shtml">worried</a> about over-reliance on gas. Charlie Crist, the Republican-turned-independent (and later Democrat) who followed him, feared the consequences of global warming and pushed the state to take action, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-florida-election-energy-analysis/florida-power-utilities-fear-return-of-green-governor-crist-idUSKBN0GW28S20140901">winning no friends</a> in the utility industry.</p>
<p>His successor, heavily backed by utilities, has different priorities. Republican Gov. Rick Scott put an FPL executive on his transition team, <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/article1976380.html">supported</a> the pipeline and made <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/03/10/392142452/florida-gov-scott-denies-banning-phrase-climate-change">national</a> news for <a href="https://fcir.org/2015/03/08/in-florida-officials-ban-term-climate-change/">banning</a> the state’s environmental protection agency from even referring to climate change.</p>
<p>Instead of being the renewable-energy leader Bush and Crist envisioned, Florida is rushing to catch up.</p>
<p>A 2017 <a href="https://cleanedge.com/reports/Corporate-Clean-Energy-Procurement-Index">ranking</a> of states for the ease with which companies can use renewables, compiled for retail and information-technology trade groups, puts Florida sixth from the bottom. The state was 15th in the country for total solar generation last year, bested by less sunny places and far outstripped by other high-potential locales.</p>
<p>North Carolina — headquarters of Duke Energy, which runs Florida’s second-largest utility — has nearly six times the electricity powered by rooftop and large-scale solar, according to Energy Information Administration data. If No. 1 California stopped building solar altogether and Florida added as much new production every year as it has right now in total, they wouldn’t pull even until 2048.</p>
<p>FPL’s solar track record helped fuel spirited <a href="https://cca.hawaii.gov/dca/files/2015/08/2015-0022-CA-DT-and-Exhibits-PUBLIC.pdf">opposition</a> in Hawaii to parent NextEra Energy’s ultimately <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article90362237.html">unsuccessful</a> plan to acquire that state’s largest utility owner. Hawaii is aiming for 100 percent renewable energy for electricity by 2045. NextEra’s sizable portfolio of solar and wind outside Florida — largest in the world, the company says — didn’t assuage concerns.</p>
<p>Asked by the Center when it might reach 50 percent renewable power, as California may do as early as <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-may-reach-50-renewable-power-goal-by-12354313.php">2020</a>, FPL said that “setting an arbitrary goal for energy from renewable resources comes at a high cost and with reliability concerns.” California has high electricity rates, FPL notes — though other factors have contributed, including an <a href="http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-capacity/">overbuild</a> of gas-fired power plants.</p>
<p>Both FPL and Duke Energy said precipitous price drops only recently made solar competitive with gas in Florida, among the <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/renewable-portfolio-standards.aspx">minority</a> of states without a requirement for utilities to hit renewable targets. The state requires a cost-driven approach, and FPL’s Valle said his company jumped on solar as soon as the economics worked.</p>
<p>“We’re building more solar than just about any other utility in the nation now,” he said.</p>
<p>Florida utilities told the state this year that they’re expecting to build 4,000 megawatts of solar and 8,900 megawatts of gas-fired power plants in the next decade. FPL planned about 2,100 megawatts of solar, which it’s now on track to build by 2023, and 2,900 megawatts of new gas-fired generation, retiring both coal and older gas units in the process.</p>
<p>In August, Duke Energy Florida <a href="https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/duke-energy-florida-files-settlement-agreement-for-building-a-smarter-energy-future">agreed</a> to build 700 megawatts of solar over the next four years rather than the similar amount it had expected to spread over a decade, along with a battery-storage project and more than 500 electric-vehicle charging stations. Still, the utility is also building a 1,640-megawatt <a href="https://www.duke-energy.com/our-company/about-us/new-generation/natural-gas/citrus-natural-gas">gas plant</a>. It will be capable of making more electricity than the coal units the utility plans to retire next year and the incoming solar combined.</p>
<p>The transition from fossil fuels isn’t going faster because the company must consider customers’ interests, said Tamara Waldmann, director of Duke Energy Florida’s distributed generation strategy and renewables. “We want to be mindful of the affordability of electricity in our state.”</p>
<h4>The advancing disaster</h4>
<p>Global warming brings its own costs. Air conditioning aside, these don’t appear on electric bills.</p>
<p>Philip Stoddard thinks about this a lot. Sitting at his dining-room table in October, 32 days after Irma battered Florida, he said he and his wife are saving money to prepare for the day climate problems render their home worthless and force them out.</p>
<p>Stoddard, mayor of South Miami (population 12,000) and a biology professor at Florida International University, lives three miles inland in an area that would be <a href="https://xs.climatecentral.org/">largely submerged</a> — along with much of South Florida — under what the federal government <a href="https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt83_Global_and_Regional_SLR_Scenarios_for_the_US_final.pdf">considers</a> a worst-case but worryingly plausible scenario by the end of the century. Some Florida scientists <a href="http://www.bio.miami.edu/arboretum/wanless.pdf">expect</a> even higher sea-level rise. Stoddard is focused on keeping the city livable as long as possible, which means battling a faster-arriving consequence of a warming world.</p>
<p>In low-lying South Florida with its porous limestone, climate-fueled heavier rains and rising oceans drive up groundwater levels. It’s just a matter of time before that inundates a lot of septic tanks, said Leonard Berry, a coastal-risk consultant and professor emeritus at Florida Atlantic University. You flush your toilet, and the waste comes back — into your bathtub, your <a href="https://thenewtropic.com/climate-change-septic-tanks-miami/">sink</a>.</p>
<p>Stoddard, looking into fixes, sees a need for hard conversations with residents of his city’s lowest-lying neighborhoods. Do they want to pay for expensive upgrades or risk owning homes without working toilets?</p>
<p>He sees a future where some communities get ahead of climate problems and others are overwhelmed. Meanwhile, he said, his utility company keeps building gas plants that emit even more of the carbon pollution fueling this slow-motion tragedy.</p>
<p>“It’s going to cost more money, it’s going to pollute the environment — it’s like, why are they doing it?” said Stoddard, a fierce FPL critic. The answer, in his view: “They own natural gas.”</p>
<p>He’s talking about FPL’s 2015 investment in an Oklahoma shale-gas project, since turned over to another subsidiary of parent NextEra. NextEra also owns a third of the new pipeline, a deal in which Duke Energy took a smaller stake.</p>
<p>FPL said both investments mean “greater access to the fuel supplies needed to operate our power plants.” But the gas project was originally structured to make FPL money as well, and its parent will <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/07/17/20982/natural-gas-building-boom-fuels-climate-worries-enrages-landowners">profit</a> off the pipeline.</p>
<p>As for the Public Service Commission, it must approve the lowest-cost electricity — yet it could look at things more holistically. State law requires the agency to consider fuel diversity, for instance, but in practice it puts no value on it. In cost-benefit analyses, it doesn’t assign a monetary benefit to steps that would decrease gas reliance, according to the commission’s Futrell.</p>
<p>The commission also can examine future electricity costs related to climate change, a factor it cited in its <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/06/State/PSC_bars_coal_fired_p.shtml">denial</a> of a proposed FPL coal plant a decade ago. That’s because customers will likely shoulder the cost of utilities’ power plants even if rules to curtail global warming force them into early retirement. But the agency couldn’t point to cases in which it had evaluated <a href="https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/publications/1-s2_0-S0306261916302495-main.pdf">the odds</a> that gas plants will become obsolete before they’re paid off.</p>
<p>That’s the fate facing new fossil plants if the world wants to meet the temperature goals set in the Paris climate agreement, which all countries <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2017/11/07/u-s-now-only-country-not-part-paris-climate-agreement-after-syria-signs/839909001/">but the U.S.</a> have committed to achieve, said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University. The alternative is installing expensive equipment to capture the plants’ carbon — or enduring more severe climate effects.</p>
<p>Shindell’s not arguing that gas is worse than coal. He’s saying the emissions are still too high. Continuing down the gas path, he warned, “will condemn Florida to going underwater.”</p>
<h4>Florida’s power players</h4>
<p>The shift across the country to cleaner electricity isn’t a simple exercise. Utilities must grapple with potential solar <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-solar-project-on-hold-over-looming-tariff-threat/510732/">tariffs</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/11/30/the-energy-202-why-the-wind-and-solar-lobby-is-terrified-of-the-senate-tax-plan/5a1f40b430fb0469e883f925/?utm_term=.cb3a607ee7a8">tax policy</a>, the likely future cost of battery storage, the best way of using intermittent energy sources. To make it easier and reward utilities for steps like helping customers use less power, some states have changed their regulatory structures by de-linking electric sales from revenues. Florida has not.</p>
<p>It’s hard to tell how much of Florida’s situation is driven by regulators as opposed to the companies they oversee. Investor-owned utilities, especially in recent years, have so much clout here.</p>
<p>The four largest of these utilities influence state lawmakers through political giving — in the 2016 election cycle alone, about $1.4 million to the Republican Party, $376,000 to the Democratic Party, at least $1.5 million to political action committees supporting the governor and other major state officials, plus direct contributions to about 80 percent of currently serving state legislators. They influence appointments to the Public Service Commission, according to the Integrity Florida <a href="http://files.constantcontact.com/d9f43dd5201/c0fa3602-ecfb-4031-b9a3-f69cd8b79114.pdf?ver=1506884568000">report</a>, a process in which both the Legislature and governor play a role.</p>
<p>They even influence the commissioners, who know from <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/sfl-psc-fpl-ties-091809-story.html">experience</a> that a good job in the industry could await “if they do the bidding of the electric companies,” said Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor. At least three former commissioners are lobbyists for electric utilities in the state.</p>
<p>Commission officials also realize if they push back too much, they’ll lose their jobs, said Timothy Devlin, ousted as executive director of the agency in 2011. The same happened to four commissioners in 2010.</p>
<p>Early that year, those commissioners voted to approve just 6 percent of the nearly $1.3-billion rate hike FPL asked for and rejected the $500 million increase Duke Energy’s predecessor requested. All were drummed out within months, <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-mtblog-2010-04-senate_rejects_new_psc_members_1-story.html">two</a> by the state Senate and the <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-mtblog-2010-06-consumeroriented_utility_regul-story.html">rest</a> by a legislatively controlled nominating council.</p>
<p>During the rate case, FPL insiders said their company engaged in a covert campaign to undermine commissioners, according to a <em>Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times</em> investigation. Consumer advocates saw their ousting as more of the same. FPL spokesman Dave McDermitt said in a statement that this and other claims about its pull in the state capital are “ludicrous charges by individuals or organizations with an old axe to grind or who are trying to advance their own political and/or policy agendas.” Of FPL’s spending on lobbying — <a href="https://www.followthemoney.org/show-me?dt=3&amp;lby-s=FL&amp;lby-y=2016&amp;lby-f-fc=2#%5B%7B1%7Cgro=lby-s,lby-y,lby-f-eid">seventh-highest</a> in the state — and roughly $15 million in political giving in the 2016 election cycle, he said, “Like most Americans, we participate in the political process.”</p>
<p>Nancy Argenziano, an ousted commissioner who’d <a href="https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b93760b5-a08c-49fe-8611-4c4515a2b893">complained about</a> furtive communications between commission staff and FPL, blames the <a href="http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2009/10/fpl-coordinated-with-aif-to-bash-argenziano.html">company</a> for her lost job. A fiery former Republican state legislator, she said the way the commission operates is appalling.</p>
<p>“It’s a cesspool,” she said. “The public has no chance.”</p>
<p>David Klement bought a house in Tallahassee before getting kicked off the commission, and lost it to foreclosure. He said his credit has only just recovered.</p>
<p>“I was so sad and angry that my effort to be an objective commissioner was foiled,” he said. “I could see the commission was going to go right back where it had been with rubber stamps and, sure enough, that’s what it became.”</p>
<p>There certainly seems to be no friction between the utilities and the commission anymore. At a regional conference last year, Julie Brown, its chair, welcomed the crowd of state utility regulators and industry executives, including from FPL and Duke Energy. She said she was looking forward to “the opportunity to have dialogue with fellow sister commissioners from different states in the South, and you know, not be subject to [the public-record] Sunshine Law … and really talk about the best practices,” according to audio recordings obtained by the Center, and urged “commissioners and utility leaders,” who responded with laughter, to have coffee or a drink together, “get to know them and develop those relationships.” Regulators and utility officials mingled over meals, golf and after-hours cocktails at the four-day conference.</p>
<p>The commission declined the Center’s requests to interview Brown and other commissioners. In a statement, it said Brown was simply encouraging commissioners from other states to strengthen their relationships with each other “and learn best practices.” The agency “vigorously strives to ensure that Florida’s consumers receive reliable, safe service at a reasonable cost,” balancing consumers’ needs with those of utilities, it said in its statement.</p>
<p>Critics often point to FPL’s gas-drilling deal in Oklahoma to illustrate how the commission tips the scales in favor of utilities. In 2014, the company asked to pass the cost of that investment on to customers, calling it an innovative way to lower fuel prices. Business and consumer groups argued the arrangement would force customers to shoulder “all the risk, 100 percent of it,” while FPL would get a guaranteed profit, said J.R. Kelly, who represents ratepayers as the state’s public counsel. Commissioners approved it against their staff’s recommendations. Last year Florida’s Supreme Court <a href="http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2016/sc15-95.pdf">ruled</a> that state law prohibited the move, overruling the commission. FPL had to refund $24.5 million to its customers.</p>
<p>FPL, undeterred, asked for a new law authorizing the investments. Legislators lined up in <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article146750094.html">support</a> this spring until the House speaker spiked the bill. Some environmental and consumer advocates worry FPL will try again.</p>
<p>Utilities’ vigorous attempts to shape rules that affect them extend to rooftop solar.</p>
<p>Slightly over half the states allow “third-party” companies to put panels on customers’ roofs for free and sell them the power, popular because it costs nothing up front. In New Jersey, which has less sun and a lot more solar than Florida, residents have <a href="https://www.seia.org/initiatives/third-party-solar-financing">largely</a> gone that route. In some states it’s unclear whether the option is legal, but Florida is among the minority banning it outright.</p>
<p>As the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Conservatives for Energy Freedom and others worked to get a measure on the ballot to change that, four utilities spent millions funding a competing effort to protect it — by enshrining it in the state constitution with language that sounded misleadingly pro-solar. Only the utility-backed measure won enough signatures to appear on the ballot in November 2016.</p>
<p>The political-action <a href="http://smartsolarfl.org/">group</a> the utilities funded said the proposal “guarantees your right to place solar panels on your home” and would save residents from “rip-offs and scams,” such as businesses that “don’t want consumers to own and operate their own solar equipment” — presumably meaning firms that would offer an option to buy the power instead. (The group denied the measure would prohibit such deals.)</p>
<p>“The utility companies had a lot of people tricked,” said Zayne Smith with AARP Florida, which advocates for older Americans.</p>
<p>A strange-bedfellows coalition of Tea Party conservatives, climate activists, Florida’s League of Women Voters, singer <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2016/10/jimmy-buffett-weighs-on-fla-amendments-no-on-1-yes-on-2-106645">Jimmy Buffett</a> and others turned the tide — along with a leaked recording of an official from a utility-funded think tank <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article109017387.html">saying</a> how delightfully sneaky the ballot measure was. Voters defeated it.</p>
<p>The utilities still say they were looking out for customers. The “primary objective was to stop the dangerous, anti-consumer proposal” that never made it on the ballot, FPL’s McDermitt said in a statement.</p>
<h4>The 'Ponzi scheme'</h4>
<p>In states like Florida, where utilities still own power plants, the profitability of those assets acts as a “perverse” incentive to build more whether they’re needed or not, said Travis Kavulla, a Montana utility regulator and former president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. State officials must act as a check, he said.</p>
<p>Utilities do need some extra capacity as a cushion to avoid blackouts. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. uses a 15 percent reserve — after accounting for certain efforts to <a href="https://energy.gov/oe/activities/technology-development/grid-modernization-and-smart-grid/demand-response">reduce energy use</a> — as the standard for systems like those in Florida. Robert McCullough, a former utility executive now with energy consulting firm McCullough Research, said that even less — around 10 percent — would be sufficient for Florida.</p>
<p>But the state’s Public Service Commission struck a deal years ago with investor-owned utilities in Florida’s peninsula — most of the state — to have them keep a higher reserve of 20 percent. It stems from concerns that the peninsula is vulnerable because utilities can go only one direction if they need out-of-state power in an emergency. Florida “must be more self-reliant to maintain system reliability,” FPL’s McDermitt said in a statement.</p>
<p>But there’s so much queued-up generation that the peninsula’s electric reliability body <a href="http://www.psc.state.fl.us/Files/PDF/Utilities/Electricgas/TenYearSitePlans/2017/FRCC.pdf">expects</a> the combined reserve will reach 25 percent by 2023.</p>
<p>Karl R. Rábago, a former utility executive and Texas utility regulator, examined FPL’s Okeechobee plant proposal for an environmental coalition challenging it in 2015. The company’s fleet was so large already that its own calculations showed a blackout risk equal to 1 day in roughly 2,600 years, “comparable to the risk of death caused by a falling meteor,” he told the commission. FPL expected the risk to rise before the plant’s opening, he said, but remain far smaller than the industry standard — 1 day in 10 years.</p>
<p>The Florida Industrial Power Users Group <a href="http://www.psc.state.fl.us/library/filings/2012/01284-2012/01284-2012.pdf">made a similar case</a> about another proposed power plant. “FPL needs the Project largely to meet the financial projections provided to Wall Street,” the group told the commission.</p>
<p>FPL — which earned nearly $11 billion in revenue last year, propelling its parent to 170 on the Fortune 500 — won in both cases. The company <a href="http://www.floridapsc.com/library/filings/2015/07570-2015/07570-2015.pdf">called</a> arguments by Rábago and others “unreliable and not worthy of serious consideration.” It pointed to a day in 2010 when it said it narrowly avoided a blackout despite a low risk calculation. It told the commission its programs reducing power usage had over the years “avoided the construction of the equivalent of 14 new power plants of 400 MW each.”</p>
<p>Rábago, who heads the Pace Energy and Climate Center at Pace Law School in New York, said FPL could have avoided even more if it had pursued the energy conservation it had claimed wasn’t cost-effective.</p>
<p>“It’s a Ponzi scheme,” he said. “You can’t keep delivering profits to your shareholders if you’re not re-upping and building newer plants.”</p>
<h4>The solar push</h4>
<p>Jody Finver drew gasps as she showed her electric bills to a roomful of people in Miami Shores: under $10 a month, down from roughly $110 before she put solar panels on her roof. Finver was telling the crowd how to go solar cheaper with <a href="https://www.solarunitedneighbors.org/florida/">Solar United Neighbors of Florida</a>, a nonprofit helping people form co-op buying pools to get bulk discounts and technical assistance.</p>
<p>Finver’s panels produce enough to power her house and then some. But any amount of utility-produced power you don’t need because you’re making it yourself is great, she told the crowd. On top of saving money, “it means you’re not relying as much on the grid.”</p>
<p>A chapter of an organization expanding around the country, the group formed in the middle of last year’s battle over the solar amendment. It was kick-started by people like Deirdre Macnab, former president of the Florida League of Women Voters.</p>
<p>Utilities say the state has low rooftop solar adoption because electric rates are cheap. But because Floridians use more electricity in their hot — and getting <a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/2017-was-floridas-warmest-year-to-date-9349539">hotter</a> — state, the average residential bill here is nearly 10 percent higher than (and FPL’s roughly the same as) the national average. Macnab, who paid $3,000 a year for electricity before solar panels reduced that by two-thirds, said the co-op pitch is simple: You can save, too.</p>
<p>“We’re trying to get the state to a tipping point,” she said.</p>
<p>Solar United Neighbors of Florida has launched 19 co-ops, some still enrolling members and others that have helped about 500 households go solar. Six more co-ops are planned for January alone. Organizers are heartened by the demand — their waiting list for new co-ops extends through next fall — and by communities taking their own steps to move the needle.</p>
<p>Among those is Orlando, a city trying to go entirely renewable by 2050. Leaders made that commitment knowing their utility would cooperate: It’s municipally owned.</p>
<p>It’s also coal-heavy, so there’s a lot of work to do. Chris Castro, Orlando’s director of sustainability, thinks the goal is necessary and attainable. The city is trying everything: Amped-up conservation that propelled Orlando from the 30th to the 20th most efficient large city in the country in a 2017 <a href="https://aceee.org/press/2017/05/cities-boost-efforts-reduce-energy">ranking</a>. A new solar site on a coal-ash landfill. A planned solar-with-battery-storage project. Panels on parking-lot roofs and a floating solar array in a pond.</p>
<p>And rooftop solar? Orlando’s utility is getting into the business. Taking a page from the co-ops, it’s launching a <a href="http://www.ouc.com/environment-community/solar/coming-soon-new-solar-program">program</a> to help customers aggregate their demand for lower prices.</p>
<p>But the utility serves 250,000 households and businesses. FPL, with 4.9 million customers, shapes Florida’s future in a bigger way.</p>
<p>Becky Ayech of the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida, which failed to convince regulators to reject the Okeechobee power plant, rues the direction the state is going. She sees the television commercials touting FPL’s record on solar. And all the while, Ayech said, “they’re still building a giant gas plant.”</p>
<p><strong>MORE FROM CARBON WARS:&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/07/17/20982/natural-gas-building-boom-fuels-climate-worries-enrages-landowners"><strong>Natural gas building boom fuels climate worries, enrages landowners</strong></a></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/11/09/21275/behind-scenes-look-scott-pruitts-dysfunctional-epa">A behind-the-scenes look at Scott Pruitt's dysfunctional EPA</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/11/02/21243/big-power-plant-ignites-political-fight-small-pennsylvania-town">Big power plant ignites political fight in small Pennsylvania town</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/10/30/21221/fear-dying-pervades-southern-californias-oil-polluted-enclaves">'The fear of dying' pervades Southern California's oil-polluted enclaves</a></strong></p>
<p><em><strong>This story was published in partnership with <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/12/10/sunshine-state-lags-solar-power-doubles-down-natural-gas/939466001/">USA Today</a>.&nbsp;</strong></em></p>
Florida Power &amp; Light’s Riviera Beach gas-fired power plant, built in 2014. FPL now generates about&nbsp;70 percent of its electricity with natural gas.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsKristen Lombardihttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/kristen-lombardiBig power plant ignites political fight in small Pennsylvania townhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21243A small Pennsylvania borough is in an uproar over a large power plant, one of many gas-fired projects underway in the state.Power station;Fossil fuel power station2017-11-02T14:28:11-04:002017-11-02T05:00:00-04:00<p><strong><em>This story was produced in collaboration with <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/">StateImpact Pennsylvania</a>.</em></strong></p>
<p>JESSUP, Pa.—The biggest new natural-gas power plant in a state awash with them is taking shape on a mountain ridge overlooking the community it cleaved apart.</p>
<p>First came questions about pollution and <a href="http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/mariposa/documents/others/2010-10-12_Effect_of_Power_Plants_on_Local_Housing_Values_Rents_TN-58732.pdf">property values</a>. Lawyers and public-records requests followed. Now this borough of 4,500, where it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that everybody knows everybody, is embroiled in a full-out political revolt.</p>
<p>Pro-plant incumbents up for election this year — two council members and the mayor — were booted in the May primary. A ticket organized by plant opponents boasts five people on the ballot in next week’s general election — candidates for all the open council seats and even school board director, which shows just how far the fault lines over the <a href="http://lackawannaenergy.com/">Lackawanna Energy Center</a> extend. Relationships have been upended. Mistrust in local government has surged.</p>
<p>“It’s like a raw nerve,” said Ellen Nielsen, president of the school board.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania has long been a power-plant colossus, exporting electricity to other states because it makes more than it uses — historically with coal and nuclear. The Jessup plant is at the vanguard of a new boom fueled by the state’s plentiful natural gas.</p>
<p>Only Texas has more planned gas-fired generation in the queue, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Energy firms have proposed over 40 gas-fired projects in Pennsylvania since 2011, including in Jessup's neighbor Archbald. Fourteen are under construction or operating. At 1,485 megawatts, Jessup’s Lackawanna Energy Center is one of the largest in the works nationwide, according to EIA data — part of a dramatic coast-to-coast expansion of gas-fired plants.</p>
<p>Electricity needs aren’t driving this upturn. Instead, in this part of the country, it’s developers hoping cheap gas will fuel profitable power plants in an increasingly crowded market. In the large, interstate electrical grid that includes Pennsylvania, the gas-plant rush is so huge it’s “poised to create a glut of supply” amid “little prospect of growth in demand,” credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service warned in May.</p>
<p>Customers will likely benefit from lower electricity bills, at least for a while. People who live near coal plants that close in the face of this stiff competition will breathe healthier air. But the rapid reshaping of U.S. electric power comes with some unpredictable, long-lasting implications.</p>
<p>Consider global warming. Natural gas produces roughly half the greenhouse gases as coal when burned, but it also leaks into the atmosphere as the potent warming agent methane when drilled, transported and consumed. Because the full extent of these leaks isn’t known, scientists can’t say just how much better for the climate gas is than the coal it’s replacing — and some fear it’s <a href="https://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/publications/f_EECT-61539-perspectives-on-air-emissions-of-methane-and-climatic-warmin_100815_27470.pdf">worse</a>. Newly built gas plants are also displacing <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/05/30/exelon-to-prematurely-close-three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant/">zero-carbon nuclear plants</a>, competing with renewable-energy sources and locking in decades more fossil-fuel use at a time when <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/24/politics/nicaragua-paris-climate-accord-us-syria/index.html">nearly all</a> the world’s countries agree that climate-warming emissions must be <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/23/15028480/roadmap-paris-climate-goals">sharply cut</a>.</p>
<p>To meet the goals set in Paris <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php">last year</a>, aimed at avoiding the worst consequences of climate change, “no new investment in fossil electricity infrastructure (without carbon capture) is feasible from 2017 at the latest,” University of Oxford academics concluded in a <a href="http://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/publications/1-s2_0-S0306261916302495-main.pdf">study</a> last year.</p>
<p>For the Pennsylvania towns considering plants — tiny municipalities outmatched by the well-resourced companies approaching them — there are other considerations that can seem daunting as well, from zoning to wastewater.</p>
<p>“Decisions made today cast long shadows,” said Gerald Cross with the Pennsylvania Economy League, a think tank.</p>
<p>Jessup is a cautionary tale for elected officials and citizens alike. Those who mobilized against the plant — which will begin operation next year — couldn’t stop it, couldn’t get it decreased in size, couldn’t convince their borough to bring in an expert to negotiate the project’s financial terms. They don’t regret the time and money they’ve spent — they’ve had some wins, the primary election among them. But those amount to a muted triumph after all the losses.</p>
<p><strong>The power plant and the citizens' group</strong></p>
<p>Chicago-based <a href="https://invenergyllc.com/news/invenergy-and-first-reserve-complete-financing-for-the-lackawanna-energy-center">Invenergy</a> is a major developer of renewables, particularly wind power. Pennsylvania is a state with a lot of <a href="https://windexchange.energy.gov/states/pa">untapped wind potential</a>. When Invenergy went scouting for locations in northeastern Pennsylvania, though, it was a different resource that appealed. Gas flows fast from Pennsylvania’s share of the <a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/drilling/">Marcellus shale play</a>, unlocked by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.</p>
<p>The company, which holds about a third of its portfolio in gas, wanted a big plant that would be so efficient it could win out in the competition to provide electricity. Invenergy sees gas as a key part of a “clean energy” future, said Dan Ewan, the company’s vice president of thermal development.</p>
<p>In Jessup, less than 10 miles northeast of Scranton, the company had easy access to what it needed: Not just gas, but also workers, transmission lines, even train tracks to move equipment in.</p>
<p>“The project provided us with a lot of the things that make a power plant a good investment,” Ewan said.</p>
<p>In 2015, as the public heard about Invenergy’s plans, the company said the plant would be <a href="http://lackawannaenergy.com/2015/05/">good for the community</a>, too. Some in Jessup, and unions in the broader region, emphatically agreed. They pointed to the jobs for hundreds of construction workers — many of whom were struggling after a long building drought triggered by the housing bust — and the money for local businesses that could benefit from the activity.</p>
<p>But once construction ended and the 30-employee plant fired up, it would pump out <a href="https://psc.wi.gov/Documents/Enviromental%20Impacts%20of%20PP.pdf">pollution</a> for the four or more decades of its expected life. The prospect that it could displace more-toxic coal plants didn’t seem a fair trade to some residents, with the nearest coal-fired sites more than 40 miles distant and tiny. And they were upset to learn that their local officials OK’d waiving taxes on the Moosic Mountain property through 2023 to encourage development — <a href="http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/invenergy-koz-was-not-condition-of-land-deal-1.1959912">after</a> Invenergy had already decided to build on it.</p>
<p>These people banded together, a few, then dozens — a retired accountant, a nurse practitioner, a winery owner, a business manager and a former Jessup councilman, among others.</p>
<p>Calling themselves <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jessupcitizens/">Citizens for a Healthy Jessup</a>, they first <a href="http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/jessup-council-to-vote-today-on-invenergy-zoning-1.1932033">tried to convince</a> their borough council not to amend zoning to allow the development on the proposed site, which sits half a mile from homes. Invenergy told the council that Jessup was in violation of state law because a power plant could not feasibly be built anywhere in the community, even in the part of Jessup with zoning that permitted it. The residents presented a case that the company could in fact construct a plant elsewhere in Jessup — a smaller one.</p>
<p>They hired a lawyer, pored over arcane regulations, went to each council meeting and sent a mailer to everyone in the borough. Jessup’s planning commission <a href="http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/jessup-planning-commission-denies-recommendation-for-zoning-change-1.1865400">agreed</a> that the zoning should remain unchanged, but the council had the final say.</p>
<p>And the council voted in Invenergy’s favor in 2015 — first to alter the zoning, later to allow the plant at full size. That followed a “build the plant” public-relations campaign by Invenergy and its supporters that included an <a href="http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/jessup-gas-plant-serves-environment-economy-1.1931290">opinion piece</a> from former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who’d <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-times-tribune/20150829/281870117196593/TextView">received</a> tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the politically connected developer selling the land to Invenergy.</p>
<p>Council members said the plant’s economic benefits, in their estimation, outweighed any disadvantages.</p>
<p>“I just personally felt that it was a boon for this area,” said Maggie Alunni, a Jessup councilwoman now finishing the last of her 16 years on that body after being voted out in the primary. “I honestly believe this is going to bring more industry and more prosperity to our area than if we had turned it away.”</p>
<p>Most people in a one-sided fight probably would have given up at that point. But “it was such a large, life-changing impact,” said Thomas J. Fiorelli III, a Citizens for a Healthy Jessup leader who served as a councilman from 2001 to 2006. So, as the focus shifted from whether the plant should be built to how much money the community would receive from it, the residents regrouped. They wanted Jessup to get as much as it could.</p>
<p>This time, they thought, they and their council surely would see eye-to-eye.</p>
<p><strong>The deal on the table</strong></p>
<p>Unlike most states, Pennsylvania doesn’t allow local governments to tax most of the overall value of power plants, according to Mark Pomykacz of Federal Appraisal, a consulting firm in New Jersey. That means less of a budget boost for communities absorbing projects, even when officials don’t temporarily waive the taxes, as Jessup did.</p>
<p>Amid mounting opposition, Invenergy said it would make extra, non-tax payments to the community until the power plant closed. The company offered $500,000 a year as a "host agreement," then upped it to $1 million a year with additional upfront money.</p>
<p>A law firm for the citizens’ group recommended that the borough ask for much more, pointing to communities outside Pennsylvania that struck deals with higher payments per megawatt. Instead, the council's negotiator and another borough staffer spent nearly an hour at a public meeting in 2016 arguing that Invenergy’s offer was excellent and the citizens’ lawyers didn't know what they were talking about.</p>
<p>Jason Petrochko, president of Citizens for a Healthy Jessup, watched the meeting unfold, stunned.</p>
<p>“That was when I really began to feel like something wasn’t right,” he said. “When they argued against trying to get more money, they were doing the job Invenergy should have done.”</p>
<p>When it was Petrochko’s turn to speak, he reminded the council that no one in the room had expertise in host-agreement negotiations except Invenergy’s lawyer — not even Jessup's negotiator, a lawyer who serves as the borough’s solicitor. Petrochko, touching on school funding woes and other local needs, said Jessup needed to hire an expert to make sure it got the best deal.</p>
<p>Four days later, the council voted 5-1 to accept the agreement as it was.</p>
<p>Richard A. Fanucci, Jessup’s solicitor, stands by the deal he negotiated. Like Invenergy, he said it’s by far the best of the few power-plant host agreements in Pennsylvania, which does not require them. He saw no need for an outside lawyer to handle the negotiations because he has long experience with municipal, zoning and contract law in the region.</p>
<p>“We lost a lot of sleep over this, making sure we did the right thing,” he said. He pointed to other power-plant communities in Pennsylvania that “got zero, they have nothing. In fact, we received calls from representatives in those municipalities, saying, ‘How the heck did you guys do that?’”</p>
<p>But as substantial as the payments will be for a borough with a $2.2 million annual budget, the organized citizens weren’t the only ones who thought more was possible. The council, the Scranton <em>Times-Tribune</em>’s columnist <a href="http://timestribuneblogs.com/uncategorized/jessup-council-holds-fire-sale/">wrote</a> after the decision, “squandered a rare opportunity for a small community to negotiate with a big corporation from a position of strength.”</p>
<p>Jessup at least got more money than Invenergy originally said it was willing to pay. The tri-borough Valley View school district, which has had to shutter its aging pool at least temporarily and raise taxes to cover budget gaps, actually ended up with less after Jessup finished negotiating.</p>
<p>The schools will receive a guaranteed $500,000, spread over five years. But they would have had about $2 million over the life of the plant under Invenergy’s original proposal, which earmarked 10 percent for the district. Had the final deal included such an earmark, the district would be getting roughly $5 million.</p>
<p>That was sobering news to Nielsen, the school board president. She'd thought the matter had worked out in the schools' benefit.</p>
<p>“I guess I should have been aware of it, but I wasn’t, because the plant was built in Jessup and I wasn’t that much involved,” said Nielsen, a resident of neighboring Archbald.</p>
<p>Fanucci said the results were fair because the school district wasn’t a party to the zoning matter. It had no right to money beyond what Jessup chose to set aside for it, he said.</p>
<p>The school district’s lawyer might have argued otherwise — if that lawyer weren’t Fanucci himself. He’s represented both the schools and the borough for years.</p>
<p>Nielsen now thinks that the school board, “knowing what happened with Jessup," might want to get a negotiator for a host agreement involving Archbald’s smaller proposed power plant. Archbald Councilwoman Erin Owen, whose husband is a school board member, strongly recommends that.</p>
<p>Owen already convinced her council to hire its own specialist for the negotiations. The Jessup host agreement was a raw deal, in her opinion, and the process left a sour taste in people's mouths.</p>
<p>“A lot of long-time friendships were lost,” she said.</p>
<p><strong>Figuring out a way forward</strong></p>
<p>Shattered relationships are no small matter in a community that resembles an extended family. Many here have lived in Jessup their whole lives, or close to it, and they're suffering through what amounts to a bloodless civil war.</p>
<p>People with concerns about the Lackawanna Energy Center speak with emotion about how their faith in people they grew up with was ruined. Some who strongly supported the project — such as Ginger Adams, whose Jessup café has seen sales rise since construction began — discovered that friends had come down passionately on the other side of the argument. The plant was a key reason Petrochko’s family moved out of Jessup to a nearby town this year, while Fanucci, whose family has lived in the Jessup area for generations, isn’t sure he wants to continue as the borough’s solicitor. And the president of the council recently tendered his resignation.</p>
<p>“I just want Jessup to heal,” said Alunni, the outgoing Jessup councilwoman. “I want it to go back to the way it was.”</p>
<p>That’s not to say she wishes the plant hadn’t been built. She still thinks going forward was the right decision. There’s the money the borough will get, which she believes was well-negotiated. And more than 1,000 construction jobs — a “godsend” that has pushed a high jobless rate among the region’s construction workers to basically zero, said Pat Dolan, president of the Scranton Building Trades Council.</p>
<p>Depending on how the general election goes, candidates affiliated with Citizens for a Healthy Jessup could gain a majority on the seven-seat council. It’s too late to stop the plant or get a vote on the host agreement, of course. But Roberta Galati, whose successful run in the Democratic primary was her first bid for public office, said there’s still important work to be done.</p>
<p>“We want transparency,” said Galati, a retired bank manager who would earn about $2,000 a year if elected. “I can’t believe … how blindly I let them do whatever they wanted to do. Years ago, I should have been going to these meetings. But better late than never, I guess.”</p>
<p>The residents think they’ve had an effect on the plant, despite the disappointments. &nbsp;If no one had organized against the project, they wonder, would there be a host agreement at all? If they hadn’t tested the stream into which Invenergy planned to discharge wastewater so there would be a record of pre-plant conditions, would the company still have <a href="http://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-times-tribune/20170708/281496456317215">decided</a> to ask to use the sewer system instead?</p>
<p>In September, as a band played classic rock and people ate kielbasa sandwiches the citizens’ group was selling to raise money for air testing, Joanne Kilgour with the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club considered the bigger picture beyond the power plant. Residents’ suggestions and requests were dismissed, she said, but they kept coming to meetings and asking questions. She sees in it a reminder for all Americans: “Our democracy is something that isn’t just handed to us, but that we have to be an active participant in.”</p>
<p>The late afternoon sun shone on the fundraiser in the valley and the power plant up on the mountain, and the music played on.</p>
<p><em>Marie Cusick of StateImpact Pennsylvania contributed to this story.</em></p>
The&nbsp;Lackawanna Energy Center, a gas-fired power plant, is under construction on a Pennsylvania mountain ridge. Homes in Jessup&nbsp;are visible in the valley below.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsOn political spending, 'our goal is not perfect philosophical alignment'http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21171At least 27 firms advocated for the Paris climate pact, yet donated to a GOP group fighting a key U.S. climate rule. Here&#039;s what they said.2017-09-19T08:09:30-04:002017-09-19T07:58:30-04:00<p>At least 27&nbsp;companies that advocated for the U.S. to address global warming as part of the Paris climate accord also collectively contributed more than $3 million to the organization that led efforts to kill a key climate plan domestically.</p>
<p>Many of the donations to the Republican Attorneys General Association were&nbsp;almost certainly not intended to bolster its anti-Clean Power Plan efforts. But their donations from 2014 to 2017 supported politicians whose lawsuit stopped the Obama-era rule from taking effect.</p>
<p>Whether companies’ political spending could collide with their policies or values is one of many items they should consider while navigating the increasingly complex and opaque system that fuels domestic politics, campaign finance experts say.&nbsp;Here’s how the 27 companies explained their approaches and how much money they spent. (Check out the <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/09/19/21168/these-companies-support-climate-action-so-why-are-they-funding-opposition-it">full story here</a>.)</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Airbnb</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Bank of America</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Best Buy</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Our commitment to climate change couldn’t be more clear: We support the United Nations Climate Agreement. &nbsp;We have reduced our own carbon emissions by nearly 50 percent over the past eight years; we now have a fleet of more than 1,200 hybrid vehicles; and we have kept more than 1.5 billion pounds of e-waste out of landfills. The fact that we belong to both the Republican and Democratic attorney general groups reflects only that we do business in all 50 states.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Citigroup</h2>
<p dir="ltr">We support a range of candidates and organizations who share our commitment to a strong financial services sector that enables widespread economic growth. That does not mean that we are in agreement with every individual and organization we contribute to on every issue. We have been outspoken in our views on climate change, and we are committed to our work with clients and partners to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Coca-Cola</h2>
<p dir="ltr">As a non-partisan business, we support a broad array of organizations and candidates across the political spectrum. In the United States, our contributions are given on the basis of many considerations – there is no one-size-fits-all approach. At times, the individual views of the organizations we support may vary from our own, which is okay by us because our goal is not perfect philosophical alignment.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Regardless, we remain focused on our efforts to achieve our goal to reduce the carbon footprint of the drink in your hand by 25% by 2020 and have worked for several years to reduce our impact on climate. We are on track to meet this commitment having achieved a 14% carbon reduction by the end of 2015.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Corning</h2>
<p dir="ltr">At no time has Corning Incorporated or the Corning Political Action Committee ever made a contribution to any Attorneys General Association, including the Republican Attorneys General Association.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In June of 2016 Corning announced the strategic realignment of its ownership of Dow Corning Corporation, which we are no longer involved as an equity investor. &nbsp;Dow Corning was a joint venture between Dow Chemical Corporation (which assumed full ownership) and Corning Incorporated. &nbsp;The Dow Corning Corporation had its own management structure and Corning was never a part of the day-to-day management or decision making process at Dow Corning.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I cannot speak to any possible donation that the Dow Corning Corporation may have made … We were strictly an equity investor in this joint venture.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Dow Chemical</h2>
<p>Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">DuPont</h2>
<p dir="ltr">DuPont is a large, diverse company with facilities and employees in many states and a wide variety of interests. &nbsp;We regularly engage with bipartisan organizations such as the National Governors Association, as well as groups affiliated with Republicans and Democrats.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We continue to believe that U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement would benefit both the U.S. economy and the climate. We remain committed to working with governments, companies, NGOs and others to bring solutions to the market that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs, and enhance U.S. competitiveness.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">eBay</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Exxon Mobil</h2>
<p dir="ltr">The following website link contains a significant amount information regarding political contributions and lobbying, including reports. Pasted below is an excerpt from the website regarding political lobbying and advocacy. Also pasted below is a table containing corporate contributions.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/accountability/political-contributions-and-lobbying/political-contributions-and-lobbying">http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/accountability/political-contributions-and-lobbying/political-contributions-and-lobbying</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Political Lobbying and Advocacy</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">ExxonMobil engages in lobbying in the United States at both the Federal and State levels to advocate our positions on issues that affect our Corporation and the energy industry. We have a responsibility to our customers, employees, communities and shareholders to represent their interests in public policy discussions that impact our business.</p>
<p dir="ltr">ExxonMobil has an established practice to determine which public policy issues are important to the Corporation. This process includes soliciting input from relevant business lines and functional departments such as Law and Public and Government Affairs. Key issues are reviewed by the Management Committee and Board of Directors of the Corporation. Positions on many key issues are available in the "Current Issues" area of this website. Our lobbying is aligned with those positions.</p>
<p dir="ltr">ExxonMobil provides support to a variety of think tanks, trade associations, and coalitions in order to promote informed dialogue and sound public policy on matters pertinent to the Corporation’s interests. These areas include, among others: fiscal policy, international trade, energy, environment, labor/pension matters, education, civil justice reform, and public health. Our support does not constitute an endorsement of every policy position or point of view expressed by a recipient organization. We conduct an annual evaluation of the merits of each organization and reserve the right to initiate, sustain, or withdraw support at any time. Some of the support provided to these organizations may be used by the firms for lobbying. ExxonMobil reports quarterly the portion of dues used for lobbying purposes in public Lobbying Disclosure Act filings.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Lobbying is highly regulated in the United States. ExxonMobil fully complies with regulations by reporting its federal lobbying to the U.S. Congress in a quarterly lobbying disclosure report. In 2016, ExxonMobil reported federal lobbying expenses totaling $11.84 million in its public Lobbying Disclosure Act filings. This total includes expenses associated with the costs of employee federal lobbying, as well as those portions of payments to trade associations, coalitions and think tanks that are spent on federal lobbying.</p>
<p dir="ltr">ExxonMobil's quarterly lobby disclosure reports are publicly available and can be viewed online at the Senate's public disclosure web site at<a href="http://www.senate.gov"> http://www.senate.gov</a> (search for “Exxon Mobil Corporation" as registrant name). Below are ExxonMobil’s 2016 quarterly reports filed with the U.S. Congress.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Corporate Contributions (000s) - National Political Organizations of State Officials</strong></p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">2012</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">2013</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">2014</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">2015</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">2016</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">Democratic Governors Association</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">125.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">75.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">125.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">25.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">25.0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">Republican Attorneys General Association<a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/accountability/political-contributions-and-lobbying/political-contributions-and-lobbying#footnote1">1</a>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">50.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">50.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">60.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">50.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">50.0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">Republican Governors Association</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">400.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">200.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">500.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">175.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">125.0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">Republican Legislative Campaign Committee<a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/accountability/political-contributions-and-lobbying/political-contributions-and-lobbying#footnote1">1</a>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">175.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">100.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">175.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">100.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">100.0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">Total</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">750.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">425.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">860.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">350.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p dir="ltr">300.0</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 dir="ltr">Facebook</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Facebook provides a similar level of support to the Democratic Attorneys General Association.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In terms of our support for RAGA, or DAGA, or both, I would refer you to Facebook’s political engagement report, specifically the section on Memberships.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-political-engagement/">https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-political-engagement/</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">I’ve pulled out the language here:</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Facebook belongs to various trade groups and organizations representing diverse views and communities. We seek to participate in conversations about the issues that directly affect our company and the experience of the people who use our service. We chose these organizations because they are engaged in meaningful dialogue about either the Internet or the local communities in which we operate. While we actively participate in these discussions, we do not always agree with every policy or position that individual organizations or their leadership take. Therefore, our membership should not be viewed as an endorsement of any particular organization or policy.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">With specific regard to Paris, you’re right about [Facebook signing on to the climate-focused] We Are Still In. I’d also point you to the comments Mark Zuckerberg made in reaction to the president’s decision:</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103765754210171">https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103765754210171</a></p>
<h2 dir="ltr">General Electric</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Google</h2>
<p>Did not respond</p>
<h2>Hewlett-Packard</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Hewlett-Packard split into two companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP, in November 2015; the majority of the political donations were made before that point. Both firms <a href="http://lowcarbonusa.org/business">support</a> the Paris agreement.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>HP:</strong></p>
<p>Did not respond</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Hewlett Packard Enterprise:</strong></p>
<p>HPE has a demonstrably strong record on climate change issues. Our bipartisan involvement with various well-regarded and long-established Attorneys General organizations on important state policy objectives, does nothing to change that. Meg Whitman was one of just 25 CEOs who signed a letter in favor [of] remaining within the Paris climate accord and recently congratulated the governor of Colorado for his proactive stance on climate change. Given these facts, any attempt to portray the company as undermining the fight against climate change would be misleading.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Intel</h2>
<p dir="ltr">The amounts you report are correct. While I can’t speak to the specifics of the decisions to donate to RAGA, many of your questions about the divergence in some objectives are addressed in our<a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/corporate-responsibility.html"> CSR report and disclosures</a>. To address a few key points,<a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/policy/policy-political-accountability.html"> Intel’s Political Accountability Guidelines</a> outline our approach to making political contributions, and Intel received a top five ranking among 500 U.S. companies evaluated in the 2016 CPA-Zicklin<a href="http://politicalaccountability.net/index"> Index of Corporate Political Accountability and Disclosure</a>. We recognize that it is impractical and unrealistic to expect that we or our stockholders and stakeholders will agree with every issue that a politician or trade association may support, particularly given our strategy of bipartisan giving. We aim to support issues that we believe will have the greatest benefit for our stockholders and key stakeholders. We also take actions to make clear our positions on key issues by publicly supporting amicus briefs or other joint policy communications. Intel is fully engaged in shaping public policy responses to climate change, both at the international level and in the countries and regions where we operate.<a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/environment-climate-change-policy-harper.html"> Intel’s Climate Change Policy</a> and<a href="http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/intel-climate-change-pledge.html"> Climate Change Pledge</a> outline our approach and commitment on this issue. Intel believes that global climate change is a serious environmental, economic and social challenge that warrants an equally serious response by governments and the private sector.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">JPMorgan Chase</h2>
<p dir="ltr">We describe our philosophy around policy and engagement and political participation on our company’s webpage. &nbsp;You can find that here:<a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/ab-political-activities.htm"> https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/ab-political-activities.htm</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">One key excerpt that I would highlight is:</p>
<p dir="ltr">JPMorgan Chase is regularly involved in legislative initiatives across a broad spectrum of policy areas that could significantly affect our operations and results. We regularly express our views to public officials and provide them with factual briefings to inform their decisions. We monitor legislative activities, analyze trends and advance public policies that will benefit the Firm and our stakeholders.</p>
<p dir="ltr">To help us achieve these objectives, we belong to a number of trade associations representing the interests of both the financial services industry specifically as well as the broader business community. These organizations work to represent the industry and advocate on major public policy issues of importance to the Firm and the communities we serve. The Firm’s participation as a member of these associations comes with the understanding that we may not always agree with all the positions of an organization or its other members. A list of the principal organizations we belong to is available<a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/document/trade-associations-2016-annual-report.pdf"> Download a list of the principal organizations we belong to here.</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">On Paris, I wanted to make sure that you had [CEO Jamie Dimon’s] statement on the withdrawal from the agreement:</p>
<p dir="ltr">“I absolutely disagree with the Administration on this issue, but we have a responsibility to engage our elected officials to work constructively and advocate for policies that improve people's lives and protect our environment." &nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr">You can find out more about our commitment to sustainability here:<a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Corporate-Responsibility/environment.htm"> https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Corporate-Responsibility/environment.htm</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">I wanted also wanted to make sure that you saw our announcement on our commitment to be 100% reliant on renewable energy by 20220 and to facilitate $200 billion in clean financing through 2025.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/news/stories/how-large-employer-up-ante-sustainability.htm">https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/news/stories/how-large-employer-up-ante-sustainability.htm</a></p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Lyft</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Lyft belongs to a broad array of organizations, including both the Democratic and Republican Attorneys General Associations, where policymakers gather to debate important issues. &nbsp;While we don't agree with every policy position held by every organization, we do think it is valuable to engage policymakers in conversation, particularly because we are in an industry with new and innovative laws and regulations. &nbsp;To be clear, we strongly support the Paris Accord and have made bold commitments to support its objectives, most notably a pledge that all autonomous vehicles operating on our platform be powered by 100% renewable energy, and a promise to provide 1 billion rides per year via electric autonomous vehicle by 2025.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Microsoft</h2>
<p dir="ltr">I’m following up to provide you with a series of background materials that speak to your questions below and, in particular, help clarify Microsoft’s support for the Paris agreement and the Clean Power Plan. Those statements still stand. The last link also outlines Microsoft’s overall approach to policy engagement, which is publicly available as part of the company’s commitment to transparency. Hope you find these resources helpful for your story.</p>
<ul>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fpulse%2Fmicrosofts-reaction-white-house-announcement-paris-agreement-smith&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cmilanca%40microsoft.com%7Ca748b0cfe9d1473ba85608d4ef4447da%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636396523928236848&amp;sdata=nIjxHFae2EgQt0cvganvn8mDHKdS4nrVWfxbw9NERMM%3D&amp;reserved=0">Brad Smith's official statement on the Paris Agreement (LinkedIn)</a></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs.microsoft.com%2Fgreen%2F2017%2F03%2F30%2Fjoint-tech-amici-statement-on-clean-power-plan%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cmilanca%40microsoft.com%7Ca748b0cfe9d1473ba85608d4ef4447da%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636396523928236848&amp;sdata=fNFFNoAkKo57lAOzYP1HwmXVE5BBEW70gj07g7Ilyy8%3D&amp;reserved=0">Microsoft's joint statement on CPP</a></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.edf.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fcontent%2F2016.04.01_major_tech_companies_amicus_brief_for_epa.pdf&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cmilanca%40microsoft.com%7C8c112d96d091450a712608d4efcebe61%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C1%7C636397118625174102&amp;sdata=RIpoAxf%2FtQ87q6zU5AmkHigba31Yv1fkv%2Bletc3bbl0%3D&amp;reserved=0">Full text of the joint amicus brief on CPP</a></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Fabout%2Fcorporate-responsibility%2Fpublic-policy-engagement&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cmilanca%40microsoft.com%7C8c112d96d091450a712608d4efcebe61%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636397118625330366&amp;sdata=1i7xTf7LRX2ppD6N7ZPs%2FbW88JmBCKKF1istuRjwWvQ%3D&amp;reserved=0">Microsoft’s approach to public policy engagement</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 dir="ltr">Monsanto</h2>
<p dir="ltr">I can tell you that we contribute equally to both parties in support of their respective Republican and Democratic national organizations.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Monsanto is squarely focused on our commitment to be<a href="https://monsanto.com/company/sustainability/climate-change/carbon-neutral/"> carbon neutral</a> by 2021. Today we are developing technologies and products to help farmers around the world tackle climate change, while reducing our own carbon footprint. Agriculture is uniquely positioned to deliver climate change solutions, so we are promoting the role agriculture can play in mitigating carbon emissions. Monsanto will continue to work with policymakers and other third parties to support the advancement and adoption of sustainable agriculture in the U.S. and around the world.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Further, we believe agriculture innovation is central to delivering tremendous benefits to farmers and society. We engage in conversations with new and returning elected officials on an ongoing basis. That said, developing new innovations in agriculture can take several years, so we focus on the long-term needs of agriculture. The role of innovation has never been more important to agriculture as the fields of biology and data science offer a range of new solutions for farmers. Farmers are faced with meeting the growing food, feed and fiber needs of an ever-increasing population in an increasingly sustainable way, and helping agriculture address global challenges such as climate change.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Monsanto's participation in the U.S. political process includes contributions to political candidates in a manner that is compliant with all applicable federal and state laws and reporting requirements. All political contributions are made without regard to the private political preferences of our company’s executives and include consideration of Monsanto's interests in legislative or policy-related activity, company facilities and employees in the state, and local political factors. For more information, we invite you to visit<a href="https://monsanto.com/company/governance/political-disclosures/"> Monsanto.com</a>.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Novartis</h2>
<p dir="ltr">At Novartis, environmental protection is one of our top priorities. We are committed to policies that facilitate an effective and balanced global response to climate change. We will not comment on RAGA as we are not a member of this association.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">PayPal</h2>
<p dir="ltr">PayPal is committed to remaining engaged in efforts to preserve the United States’ role as a global leader in emission reduction. Separately, PayPal’s political sponsorships are made to organizations on both sides of the aisle to facilitate dialogue and educate policymakers on the company’s values and business priorities, an effort undertaken to promote positive change for our employees, customers and society as a whole. &nbsp;</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">PepsiCo</h2>
<p>Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">SolarCity</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Declined to comment</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Uber Technologies</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Did not respond</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Walmart</h2>
<p dir="ltr">We support the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Democrat Attorneys General Association, the National Association of Attorneys General, the Conference of Western Attorneys General and engage with all of them on a broad set of issues which impact our customers and associates. As a signatory to the We Are Still In initiative supporting climate action to meet the Paris Agreement, and as one of the largest procurers of renewable energy in the United States, Walmart has remained consistent in our climate advocacy and sustainable business practices.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Western Union</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Western Union continues to implement comprehensive compliance measures to help protect customers and the integrity of the its global money transfer network. &nbsp;It is important that attorneys general (AGs) are aware and educated around the advancements Western Union is making these and other areas.</p>
<p dir="ltr">To strengthen its relationships with AGs nationwide, Western Union participates in various attorney general-based organizations – including the Republican Attorney General Association (RAGA) and the Democratic Attorney General Association (DAGA), as well as non-partisan groups such as the Conference of Western Attorney Generals (CWAG) and the National Association of Attorney Generals (NAAG). &nbsp;The company utilizes memberships within these groups to properly educate AGs and support consumer regulatory and protection initiatives in their respective states. &nbsp;On average, the company contributes roughly $15,000 annually to both the RAGA and the DAGA. &nbsp;While the company does contribute financially to both organizations, it does not mean the company is aligned and supports all priorities and positions made by each organization.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Like hundreds of corporations worldwide, Western Union views climate change as a serious global challenge that requires widespread global cooperation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As a company operating in 200 countries and territories worldwide, Western Union understands climate change impacts its millions of customers all over the world in many different ways.</p>
<p dir="ltr">While the company has not taken a position on the Clean Power Plan itself, being environmental stewards of our lands and working to create a cleaner environment is something the company fully supports.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The company believes the Paris Climate Agreement is a major cog in working to achieve global support amongst countries around the world to help foster sustainable solutions that address climate change, and at the same time, create jobs and economic growth by promoting innovation and technology advancements.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Yahoo</h2>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Statement from Oath, the Verizon arm that runs Yahoo after the acquisition of Yahoo in June 2017:</em></p>
<p dir="ltr">As a global company, it's essential for us to engage with and educate elected officials across party lines on policies important to the tech and media industry. This is a function of our democratic system.</p>
Rachel Levenhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/rachel-levenJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsThese companies support climate action, so why are they funding opposition to it?http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/21168A tale of Paris climate agreement supporters, political spending and unintended consequences.2017-09-19T05:01:53-04:002017-09-19T05:00:00-04:00<p>The international climate-fighting pact would create jobs, Google said. Leaving the deal known as the Paris accord would be bad for business, top executives from Bank of America and Coca-Cola argued. When President Donald Trump committed to yanking the U.S. out anyway, PayPal and Western Union countered “<a href="http://wearestillin.com/">We are still in</a>.”</p>
<p>These corporate titans and at least 22 others were among those who sought to preserve the United States’ role in the landmark Paris agreement <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9444.php">ratified</a> by about 160 countries. So why exactly would these 27 business powerhouses also support a GOP group that’s fought to <em>undo</em> a key Obama-era domestic climate initiative?</p>
<p>The answer is, well, complicated. The overwhelming majority of these companies have no overt incentive to undermine the U.S. climate effort. One leading solar company, in fact, had a driving financial imperative to cheer it on. These companies’ donations of more than $3 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association over the past three-and-a-half years speaks instead to the difficulties for corporations trying to navigate the political system in a country that's polarized — particularly on climate change.</p>
<p>The Obama-era Clean Power Plan provides a stark example. &nbsp;Starting in 2014, the group comprising many states’ Republican attorneys general spoke out against this Obama-era rule aiming to reduce climate-changing carbon emissions in the U.S. power sector. Nearly all the Republican attorneys general sued in 2015, alongside fossil fuel groups, to quash the power plan. A few Democratic attorneys general did as well; the majority pushed back in court to try to save it.</p>
<p>In giving to the GOP group, many of the big businesses said they were simply following a time-honored corporate tradition of donating to both parties — though most of these companies donated more to the Republican group than its Democratic counterpart. And they nodded at the political reality: A business needs to engage with elected officials on both sides of the aisle to influence policy, they said.</p>
<p>“This is a function of our democratic system,” Verizon subsidiary Oath said in a statement, speaking on behalf of one company on the list that it recently acquired, Yahoo.</p>
<p>But campaign finance experts countered that business officials can influence policy without writing a check to decision-makers like attorneys general — advocating their policy positions through lobbyists, for example. Because these businesses have said climate action is a priority, making political contributions that can work against that goal puts their reputations or even revenues at risk, these experts said.</p>
<p>“I don’t doubt that their public statements about the Paris climate agreement are sincere but it matters that when it actually comes down to how they spend their money, they’re giving to politicians that have almost the exact opposite goal,” said Daniel Weiner, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, which advocates for campaign finance reform. “It doesn’t mean that they’re actually lying, but it does lead one to wonder how strong their commitment to fight global warming actually is.”</p>
<p><strong>Attorneys general and climate change</strong></p>
<p>The job of state attorney general has in recent years become increasingly high-profile and partisan. The GOP group, also known as RAGA, and the competing Democratic Attorneys General Association didn’t even exist until 1999 and 2002, respectively. Now, both are sharply focused on election fundraising to increase their parties’ control of top state prosecutor jobs.</p>
<p>Attorneys general have flexed their muscles in a variety of ways, <a href="http://time.com/money/4927838/trump-daca-attorney-generals/">most recently</a> when the Trump administration said it was partly threats of litigation from GOP AGs that caused the president to halt a program protecting from deportation certain immigrants brought to the country as children. A coalition of Democratic AGs then <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/daca-lawsuits-trump.html?emc=edit_cn_20170907&amp;nl=first-draft&amp;nlid=79183374&amp;te=1">promptly sued</a>.</p>
<p>But it’s the domestic Clean Power Plan that has received an outsize share of energy from Republican attorneys general. RAGA has called the rule “unlawful” and a prime example of the federal Environmental Protection Agency exerting authority that it doesn’t have to carry out a political agenda against fossil fuels. The GOP group has warned that it would kill jobs, raise electricity prices and put in jeopardy the power grid’s reliability. (These arguments were <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/08/03/clean-power-plan-myths-and-facts">disputed</a> by the Obama administration.)</p>
<p>RAGA, which did not respond to requests for comment, isn’t the only Republican fundraising group whose elected officials have doubts about global warming or the necessity of combating it through federal action. But the attorneys general association has stood out for making the power plan specifically its Enemy No. 1. The victory that tops RAGA’s list of accomplishments on its <a href="http://www.republicanags.com/about">website</a>: Convincing the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 “to halt implementation of Obama’s signature climate change initiative.”</p>
<p>The Republican attorneys general were likely crucial in securing the Supreme Court decision to keep the rule from taking effect while a lower court considered its legality because they “gave the opposition to the plan a legitimacy it wouldn’t otherwise have had,” said Daniel Farber, a law professor with the University of California, Berkeley. That pause left the still-in-limbo plan more vulnerable to the new administration, which is now determining its next steps after Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/11/trump-has-vowed-to-kill-the-clean-power-plan-heres-how-he-might-and-might-not-succeed/?utm_term=.86c83c8ec382">vowed</a> to dismantle it. &nbsp;</p>
<p>“As we've seen with Obamacare,” Farber said by email, referring to health care reform efforts, “once something has gone into effect, it becomes a lot harder to undo it.”</p>
<p><strong>Intended and unintended consequences</strong></p>
<p>Some political contributors couldn’t be happier. Though RAGA has said it reached its conclusion that the power plan was an unconstitutional overreach on its own, separate from political contributions, coal conglomerate Murray Energy was among those that donated to the group, then urged legal action, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-07/battered-coal-companies-courted-state-ags-to-fight-climate-rules">Bloomber</a><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-07/battered-coal-companies-courted-state-ags-to-fight-climate-rules">g</a> News reported.</p>
<p>The 27 companies that spoke out against leaving the Paris accord and then supported RAGA are another matter.</p>
<p>Only two pushed back in some way against the Obama administration Clean Power Plan fought by RAGA — Exxon Mobil, which panned it, and General Electric, which advocated for several changes while it was still a proposal. &nbsp;Far more were active on the other side, urging officials to support the rule — or even, in the case of Google and Microsoft, filing arguments in court to try to counteract the lawsuit by the attorneys general whose political group they’d helped fund.</p>
<p>The most striking example? SolarCity, the nation’s largest residential solar-panel provider. Its investors were certain the Obama power plan would be good for business — and its absence was bad news. The company’s stock nose-dived 26 percent the morning after the Supreme Court paused the rule.</p>
<p>Still, three months later, SolarCity donated $20,000 to RAGA, on top of the roughly $15,000 it donated to the group the year before.</p>
<p><strong>Dues for “membership”</strong></p>
<p>So why did it do that? SolarCity declined to comment. Several others <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/09/14/21171/political-spending-our-goal-not-perfect-philosophical-alignment">didn’t respond</a>, including Bank of America and Google. But other companies, such as PayPal, echoed a common theme: the need to support or work with candidates and organizations on both sides of the aisle that deal with issues central to their business.</p>
<p>During the timeframe that the 27 companies donated about $3.3 million to the Republican group, 23 of them collectively gave about $1.9 million to the parallel Democratic organization.</p>
<p>Some companies, including JPMorgan Chase, told the Center that their contributions to RAGA are “dues” or that they are “members” — as if the political group with a mission of getting officials elected is no different than a trade association. Western Union said its membership in both attorneys general groups allows it to “properly educate” state prosecutors and support other initiatives in individual states.</p>
<p>Indeed, RAGA has pitched itself that way (and <a href="http://www.republicanags.com/raga_membership_sponsorship_pledge">still does</a>) to would-be contributors, laying out the “membership benefits” — access — for various amounts of money, according to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1339571-1-raga.html#pages">internal documents</a> obtained by <em>The New York Times</em>. The Democratic group has done the same, the newspaper <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1339572-2-daga.html">reported</a> in a 2014 investigation.</p>
<p>Sean Rankin, executive director of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, said the money flowing to its attorneys general isn’t changing their stance on issues. But they see an existential need to catch up with their Republican counterparts’ fundraising. The attorneys general for twenty states and &nbsp;the District of Columbia are Democrats, down from 32 in 2010.</p>
<p>Between 2014 and mid-2017 alone, RAGA raised nearly three times as much as the Democratic group from all sources.</p>
<p>“The money is significant,” Rankin said. “It was money that played a role to put more Republican AGs into office.”</p>
<p>For Coca-Cola, which gave just over $200,000 to the Republican group and about $75,000 to the Democratic group between 2014 and mid-2017, political donations aren’t earmarked to support all the policy positions held by recipients. &nbsp;“Our goal is not perfect philosophical alignment,” the company said.</p>
<p>Intel, which gave $50,000 to the Republican group and $25,000 to its counterpart, was more direct.</p>
<p>“We recognize that it is impractical and unrealistic to expect that we or our stockholders and stakeholders will agree with every issue that a politician or trade association may support, particularly given our strategy of bipartisan giving,” William Moss, a spokesman for Intel, wrote in an email.</p>
<p><strong>Risks to the bottom line</strong></p>
<p>But the implicit dilemma is that political spending is an action, even when companies split their contributions to the country’s two major parties down the middle, said <a href="https://www.scu.edu/ethics/about-the-center/people/staff/ann-skeet/">Ann Skeet</a>, director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.</p>
<p>“There’s actually policy implications that go with the money that they spend,” Skeet said.</p>
<p>The Conference Board, a business membership and research association, warns companies flat out in its corporate political activity <a href="https://www.conference-board.org/retrievefile.cfm?filename=1189_1309335497.pdf&amp;type=subsite">handbook</a> that that they “must be mindful of the risks” to their reputation or bottom line if they belong to trade groups opposing their positions on major issues. Bruce F. Freed, a co-author of that report — which cites climate change as a potent example of priority clash — said the same point is true of corporate political giving to any group. Freed is president of the Washington watchdog Center for Political Accountability.</p>
<p>Target, which is not one of the 27 companies on the Center’s list, could tell them a thing or two about PR problems. The company, which built a reputation for gay-friendly policies, faced boycotts in 2010 after contributing $150,000 to a super PAC backing a candidate who opposed gay marriage. The company <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/target-ceo-apologizes-for-company-s-support-of-tom-emmer">apologized</a> after initially saying the donation fit into Target’s strategy of giving to pro-business candidates “on both sides of the aisle.”</p>
<p>“There are real consequences,” said Freed, “when there is a disconnect.”</p>
This photo dated Thursday, June 1, 2017 shows the City Hall of Paris, France, illuminated in green following the announcement by US President Donald Trump that the United States will withdraw from the 2015 Paris accord and try to negotiate a new global deal on climate change.
Rachel Levenhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/rachel-levenJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsNatural gas building boom fuels climate worries, enrages landownershttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20982The federal regulator considering plans to double the natural gas that could flow from Appalachia almost never says no to a pipeline.Natural gas;Canada–United States relations;Kinder Morgan;Energy in the United States;Energy;Federal Energy Regulatory Commission;Jon Wellinghoff;Natural Gas Act;Draft:Controversy around the pipeline from Marcellus;Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act2017-07-17T14:03:56-04:002017-07-17T05:00:00-04:00<p>They landed, one after another, in 2015: plans for nearly a dozen interstate pipelines to move natural gas beneath rivers, mountains and people’s yards. Like spokes on a wheel, they’d spread from Appalachia to markets in every direction.</p>
<p>Together these new and expanded pipelines — comprising 2,500 miles of steel in all — would double the amount of gas that could flow out of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The cheap fuel will benefit consumers and manufacturers, the developers promise.</p>
<p>But some scientists warn that the rush to more fully tap the rich Marcellus and Utica shales is bad for a dangerously warming planet, extending the country’s fossil-fuel habit by half a century. Industry consultants say there isn’t even enough demand in the United States for all the gas that would come from this boost in production.</p>
<p>And yet, five of the 11 pipelines already have been approved. The rest await a decision from a federal regulator that almost never says no.</p>
<p>The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is charged with making sure new gas pipelines are in the public interest and have minimal impact. This is no small matter. Companies given certificates to build by FERC gain a powerful tool: eminent domain, enabling them to proceed whether affected landowners cooperate or not.</p>
<p>Only twice in the past 30 years has FERC rejected a pipeline out of hundreds proposed, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/">StateImpact Pennsylvania</a>, a public media partnership between WITF in Harrisburg and WHYY in Philadelphia. At best, FERC officials superficially probe projects’ ramifications for the changing climate, despite persistent calls by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for deeper analyses. FERC’s assessments of need are based largely on company filings. That’s not likely to change with a pro-infrastructure president who can now fill four open seats on the five-member commission.</p>
<p>“They don’t seem to pay any attention to opponents,” said Tom Hadwin, a retired utility manager from Staunton, Virginia. He doubts FERC will be swayed by the flood of written comments, including his own, and studies critiquing the <a href="https://atlanticcoastpipeline.com/">Atlantic Coast pipeline</a>. It’s the largest of the pending projects and would wind nearly 600 miles from West Virginia into his home state and North Carolina.</p>
<p>“FERC will issue the certificate,” Hadwin said. “They always have.”</p>
<p>FERC declined Center and StateImpact Pennsylvania requests to interview Cheryl A. LaFleur, its acting chairman, as well as senior officials. In response to written questions, the agency said it hasn’t kept track of the number of projects it denies. It provided a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3894322-FERC-Q-amp-A.html">brief statement</a> offering little insight into its pipeline-approval process. FERC spokeswoman Mary O’Driscoll wrote that, as a quasi-judicial body, “we must be very careful about what we say.”</p>
<p>In the statement, the agency said the <a href="https://www.eia.gov/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngmajorleg/ngact1938.html">Natural Gas Act of 1938</a> requires it to approve infrastructure projects that it <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/717f">finds</a> would serve “the present or future public convenience and necessity.” FERC wouldn’t explain how it weighs competing interests; instead, it pointed to a <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/legal/maj-ord-reg/PL99-3-000.pdf">1999 </a><a href="https://www.ferc.gov/legal/maj-ord-reg/PL99-3-000.pdf">policy</a> outlining how it defers to market forces. That policy, still in effect, was influenced by, among others, <a href="http://www.npr.org/news/specials/enron/">Enron</a>, the energy firm whose spectacular collapse in 2001 led to prosecutions and bankruptcy.</p>
<p>Former insiders defend the commission, describing its mandate as limited. Renewable-energy consultant Jon Wellinghoff, a FERC commissioner from 2006 to 2013, including nearly five years as its chairman, said the agency has little leeway for denying a pipeline. “It has to stay within the tracks,” he said.</p>
<p>Donald F. Santa Jr., a former FERC commissioner who heads the pipeline industry’s trade group, the <a href="http://www.ingaa.org/cms/115.aspx">Interstate Natural Gas Association of America</a>, said the agency’s low denial rate merely reflects the quality of the projects. They’re so expensive to build that few make it off the drawing board into FERC applications.</p>
<p>“It’s the envy of the world,” Santa said, referring to the nation’s pipeline network. “It is something that has enabled us to have remarkably competitive natural gas markets that have benefited consumers and the economy.”</p>
<p>Two former directors of the FERC office overseeing pipelines say no project survives the vetting process without route alterations or other changes. On occasion, FERC has delayed or rescinded approval of projects that don’t meet specific conditions. But at every turn, the agency’s process favors pipeline companies, according to Center and StateImpact Pennsylvania interviews with more than 100 people, reviews of FERC records and analyses of nearly 500 pipeline cases.</p>
<p>Among the findings:</p>
<p>● It’s hard to see where FERC ends and industry begins. Dozens of agency staff members have had to recuse themselves in recent years while negotiating jobs at energy firms. Most commissioners leave FERC to work for industry as well, in some cases lobbying their successors.</p>
<p>● Four of six major pending pipelines in the Appalachian basin were proposed by companies planning to sell pipeline capacity to utilities they own. Analysts who have scrutinized some of these cases say this new wave of self-dealing raises the risk of companies pursuing unneeded infrastructure that utility customers would end up paying for. FERC dismissed such concerns about two pipelines approved last year.</p>
<p>● The Obama-era EPA repeatedly asked FERC to scrutinize projects’ climate impacts, saying in a <a href="https://cdxnodengn.epa.gov/cdx-enepa-II/public/action/eis/details?downloadAttachment=&amp;attachmentId=219128">rebuke in October</a> that its failure to properly do so did not comply with a key environmental law.</p>
<p>● FERC delays appeals of its pipeline approvals for months while allowing companies to begin construction. In seven cases since 2015, gas already was flowing in the pipeline by the time opponents could challenge it in court.</p>
<p>In February, on his last day as a commissioner, former FERC Chairman Norman Bay <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3517166-FERC-Bay-Statement.html">recommended</a> that the agency evaluate the cumulative effects of increased gas production in the Marcellus and Utica shales, mostly in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio — an analysis environmentalists have advocated. Bay urged the agency to be more rigorous in its reviews.</p>
<p>“It is inefficient to build pipelines that may not be needed over the long term and that become stranded assets,” wrote Bay, an Obama appointee.</p>
<p>But FERC has resisted making such reforms. Now, with FERC down to a single commissioner and temporarily without a quorum, President Donald Trump gets to reshape the agency. Among <a href="http://www.utilitydive.com/news/senate-committee-advances-trumps-ferc-nominees/444353/">those he has tapped</a> for the commission is a pro-gas utility regulator from Pennsylvania, Robert Powelson, who in March <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/03/21/utility-regulator-slams-pipeline-opponents/">likened</a> protests against pipelines to “jihad,” later calling that “an <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/03/23/amid-criticism-utility-regulator-walks-back-jihad-remark/">inappropriate</a> choice of words.”</p>
<p>“We’ve got abundant supply,” Powelson said at a gas-industry conference. “What we don’t have is adequate pipeline infrastructure.”</p>
<p><strong>Close ties with industry</strong></p>
<p>In the past few years, FERC has overseen what it says is <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/market-oversight/reports-analyses/st-mkt-ovr/2016-som.pdf">one of the largest boosts</a> in natural-gas pipeline capacity in American history. It issued certificates in 2015 for projects that collectively <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/media/headlines/2017/2017-1/01-26-17.pdf">can carry</a> 14.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day. The next year, it approved an additional 17.6 billion cubic feet.</p>
<p>Newly built pipe has helped move Appalachian gas to markets along the East Coast and in the Midwest, the agency says.</p>
<p>That, in essence, explains how FERC sees its role — dating to its birth in a decade marred by energy crises. In 1977, amid a <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7167">natural-gas shortage</a> and after <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/oil-embargo">an oil embargo</a> by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Congress created the agency and placed it within, yet <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/students/whatisferc.asp">independent of</a>, the new U.S. Department of Energy. FERC’s <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/about/about.asp">mission</a>: “Reliable, Efficient and Sustainable Energy.”</p>
<p>Proponents of the pipeline buildout argue that more American gas brings jobs to places sorely in need of them by fueling energy-hungry factories. And gas has bypassed higher-carbon coal as the dominant energy source in the U.S. But grassroots pushback is coming from both ends of the political spectrum, driven by concerns over the climate and individual property rights.</p>
<p>To such critics, FERC has come to epitomize a captured regulator.</p>
<p>Records obtained by the Center and StateImpact Pennsylvania through Freedom of Information Act requests reveal an exceptionally cozy relationship between regulator and regulated. Emails and official calendars from mid-2010 through 2016 show a steady march of industry representatives before commissioners. Large energy companies — Kinder Morgan, Dominion Energy, Energy Transfer Partners, Duke Energy — scheduled at least 93 meetings with FERC officials during those 6 ½ years. Trade groups like <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3892360-ENCLOSURE-PART-3-EDISON-ELECTRIC-INSTITUTE-EEI.html">Edison Electric Institute</a> and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3892362-ENCLOSURE-PART-1-AMERICAN-GAS-ASSOCIATION-FOIA.html">American Gas Association</a> wooed commissioners and staff with invitations to executive dinners and after-hours parties. Former commissioners-turned-lobbyists, such as INGAA’s Santa, called on their successors.</p>
<p>By contrast, records show, FERC commissioners met with environmental and public-interest groups 17 times over this period.</p>
<p>In many ways, FERC operates like a one-way street: Commissioners may come to it from legislative or regulatory bodies, but almost always leave for industry. Eighty percent of the 35 former commissioners have spent at least part of their post-FERC careers at energy companies or law firms, trade groups and consultancies representing them. Many have ties to natural gas through work or positions on corporate boards.</p>
<p>There’s a similar pattern among FERC’s rank and file. Since 2012, staff members have submitted more than 50 requests to recuse themselves from regulatory work while seeking jobs at energy firms or consulting groups hired by the industry, agency documents show.</p>
<p>Some who have left FERC return to do the bidding of their new employers. In email exchanges in 2016, one woman who now works for Edison Electric Institute called on her former co-workers multiple times — seeking materials for an email blast, for instance, or inviting FERC commissioners to EEI events.</p>
<p>“Are you ready for the protestors??” she <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3892361-ENCLOSURE-PART-3A-EDISON-ELECTRIC-INSTITUTE-EEI.html">wrote</a> in one email to her former colleagues. “Too bad you guys can't move the open mtg like last year. They just keep sucking!”</p>
<p>Many critics see an inherent industry bias at FERC: Its budget is <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/about/strat-docs/2016/FY17-Budget-Request.pdf">fully covered</a> by fees collected from regulated companies. Last year, a Pennsylvania environmental group <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3380708-FERC-Complaint-FINAL.html">sued</a> FERC over this funding mechanism, alleging it creates “a perverse incentive” for the agency to build pipelines. The lawsuit is on appeal after a federal court <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/legal/court-cases/opinions/2017/16-cv-416.pdf">dismissed it</a> in March, noting that Congress ultimately sets FERC’s budget.</p>
<p>This is the agency’s approval process: Take proposals as they come, see if the pipeline has long-term customer contracts, gather public feedback, try to keep local impacts to a minimum and assure basic safety standards.</p>
<p>J. Mark Robinson, an industry consultant, worked at FERC from 1978 to 2009, heading the office overseeing gas pipelines in his final years there. Interstate transmission lines often never go forward, he said, but FERC’s results speak for themselves. Pipelines get built; people get energy.</p>
<p>Pipeline companies, for their part, say the review process is exacting. Bruce McKay, senior energy policy director at Dominion, majority owner and operator of the Atlantic Coast pipeline, said the companies behind the proposal have submitted 100,000 pages of documentation to FERC and made 300 route adjustments to avoid ecologically sensitive areas at the agency’s request.</p>
<p>“They’re not there to do our bidding,” McKay said of FERC.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem that way to Chad Oba, a mental-health counselor from Buckingham County, Virginia. There the Atlantic Coast developers plan to build a massive compressor station where engines would throb to keep gas moving. Oba attended a FERC meeting on the project in 2015, driving nearly an hour with as many neighbors as she could to testify. They didn’t want an industrial complex in their rural area, already crisscrossed by four gas pipelines. They questioned its siting amid a largely poor, African-American community founded by freed slaves.</p>
<p>“I thought, ‘Surely, these things will be considered,’” said Oba, of the anti-pipeline group Friends of Buckingham. But FERC has backed the location. The agency has never held a hearing in her county, despite requests from her group and a county commissioner.</p>
<p>“They’ve treated Buckingham very badly,” she said.</p>
<p>Such sentiments may not be what Charles B. Curtis, FERC’s first chairman, envisioned in 1979, when he wrote in congressional testimony that “we must create public confidence … and demonstrate that regulation can work effectively to promote the public interest.” At the time, he was looking to fund a congressionally mandated Office of Public Participation at FERC.</p>
<p>That never happened. Members of Congress couldn’t agree on funding for the office that year. The Center and StateImpact Pennsylvania found no evidence that FERC tried to launch the office again, despite congressional requests and a formal <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3893829-Petition-to-FERC-to-Establish-an-OPP.html">petition</a> to do so.</p>
<p>Those seeking to challenge a pipeline frequently run into roadblocks. Before mounting a case in court, opponents must first appeal to FERC, which, by law, has 30 days to act. Yet records show commissioners routinely fulfill this obligation by granting themselves more time to issue a final ruling, leaving the challengers in limbo. Meanwhile, FERC allows pipeline companies to move ahead. By the time opponents get to court, construction can be well underway — or finished.</p>
<p>Ryan Talbott, an environmental lawyer at Appalachian Mountain Advocates, said he’s seen this pattern play out in every pipeline case he’s fought — more than a dozen so far. Last year, he set out to analyze FERC’s record on pipeline appeals. He found that commissioners take, on average, eight months to deliberate — then deny the appeals. A lawsuit filed against FERC seeks to have this practice declared unconstitutional.</p>
<p>The agency declined to comment.</p>
<p>FERC’s methods have fueled a grassroots campaign against it. Pipeline opponents have protested outside its Washington, D.C., headquarters since 2014. Some have gone on hunger strikes, interrupted commission meetings or picketed commissioners’ houses. Last year, 182 groups in 35 states <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3455976-Cong-Hrgs-Request-Sign-On.html">called</a> for congressional hearings into “the many ways communities are being harmed by FERC.”</p>
<p>Current and former officials consider the protests misplaced. Comprehensive energy regulation isn’t within FERC’s purview, they say; those who want changes should talk to Congress.</p>
<p>FERC opponents have done that, to no avail. But William Penniman, a retired lawyer who represented pipeline firms before FERC and is now active with the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter, said the agency already has the authority to do more, yet chooses not to.</p>
<p>“Climate change, stranded assets, the construction bubble — they are not coming to grips with that,” he said.</p>
<p><strong>Pressing FERC on climate</strong></p>
<p>Gas-company executives often pitch their fuel to FERC as a long-term necessity for the country, filling in for renewable energy sources when the sun fades or the wind lags, powering industrial furnaces, heating homes. Companies propose new pipelines meant to last 50 years or more, presenting them as climate-friendly.</p>
<p>Environmentalists disagree, however, and are pushing FERC to dig deeper. Each additional gas pipeline, they warn, will make it easier to delay no-carbon alternatives and could lock in even worse effects of global warming.</p>
<p>Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, giving off about half the planet-heating carbon dioxide and a fraction of the toxic air emissions. Yet to avoid the worst of the heat waves, droughts, floods and other consequences of climate change, the Obama White House <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3889630-U-S-Cover-Note-INDC-and-Accompanying-Information.html">said</a> the U.S. needed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 80 percent below 2005 levels no later than 2050. That’s all emissions from all sources, not just electricity and heating. And it’s 33 years from now, less than the lifetime of a pipeline.</p>
<p>Indeed, some advocates have <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3517043-Bridge-Too-Far-Report-v6-3.html">calculated</a> that new pipelines in the Appalachian basin would yield enough greenhouse-gas emissions from natural gas alone to surpass that goal.</p>
<p>That’s because the primary component of natural gas — methane — is a short-lived yet powerful greenhouse gas also contributing to climate change. Methane wafts into the atmosphere during every stage in the gas supply chain: Wells, processing facilities, pipelines and compressor stations all leak. Some vent methane by design.</p>
<p>The EPA has pegged the national rate at which methane escapes from oil and gas drilling sites at between 1 and 2 percent, based on industry estimates. Some independent research suggests that may be accurate.</p>
<p>But Robert Howarth, an environmental biology professor at Cornell University, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3759966-Howarth-2015-Methane-and-Climactic-Warming.html">estimates</a> that methane emissions produced by shale gas from wellhead to delivery could add up to a 12-percent leak rate — causing substantially more warming in the short term than coal. Howarth sees the rapid rise in gas development as a contributor to the recent spike in global temperatures, including record-breaking heat waves in 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>“The buildout of pipelines,” he said, “is a true climate disaster.”</p>
<p>Despite prodding from the EPA since 2013, FERC hasn’t taken a comprehensive look at the climate effects of gas projects before approving them. The agency only began estimating greenhouse-gas emissions from the burning of gas last year, and not in all cases. The total emissions for five pipelines, all pending: 170 million metric tons per year combined, the warming <a href="https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator">equivalent</a> of 50 coal plants.</p>
<p>FERC refused to comment on its climate reviews, citing unspecified litigation. The Obama EPA contended that FERC has a duty to evaluate a pipeline proposal’s climate impacts under the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/nepa">National Environmental Policy Act</a>. EPA officials said so in a <a href="https://cdxnodengn.epa.gov/cdx-enepa-II/public/action/eis/details;jsessionid=E359DFA73D7CA3795B9116D9914AEF1C?downloadAttachment=&amp;attachmentId=219128">pointed letter</a> to FERC in October, after yet another pipeline review failed to estimate production or end-use emissions, calling the absence of these calculations “very concerning.”</p>
<p>The EPA says productive discussions have taken place since. But FERC has yet to evaluate greenhouse- gas emissions for pipelines as thoroughly as its counterpart urged.</p>
<p>It also doesn’t delve into whether electric utilities seeking gas for future plants could handle demand another way, such as energy efficiency and renewables. Such alternatives, FERC says in its reviews, would not fulfil the purpose of the project&nbsp; — “to transport natural gas.”</p>
<p>It boils down to a dispute about how far FERC can or should go.</p>
<p>“FERC has no legislative authority whatsoever to look at climate impacts,” said Wellinghoff, one of the only former commissioners with a renewable-energy background. “I would have loved to have had that authority at FERC, but I didn’t.”</p>
<p>Still, people keep pressing FERC to act. Last year, the Sierra Club and other groups sued the agency over its failure to calculate greenhouse-gas emissions from the since-built Sabal Trail pipeline, which runs from Alabama into Georgia and Florida. At a D.C. appellate court hearing in April, judges asked a FERC lawyer why the agency hadn’t done so.</p>
<p>The lawyer said FERC had determined the project wouldn’t meaningfully contribute to climate change. Judge Judith W. Rogers said it wasn’t possible to know that without doing the calculations.</p>
<p>“FERC said, ‘We’re just not going to do anything,’” she said.</p>
<p><strong>Enron’s advice</strong></p>
<p>In the 1990s, FERC posed this question: Was its pipeline-approval process working well? One company argued that the agency needed “to shift its focus away from command-and-control regulation towards policies that increasingly rely on market forces.”</p>
<p>That company was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/02/us/enron-fast-facts/index.html">Enron</a>. In 1999, its free-market views influenced <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/legal/maj-ord-reg/PL99-3-000.pdf">FERC’s policy</a> on how it would weigh projects. Years later, a New Jersey man fighting a pipeline that would run 167 feet from his daughter’s bedroom read the historical document with outrage and disbelief.</p>
<p>“You might have heard of Enron,” said Mike Spille, a software engineer trying to fend off the <a href="http://penneastpipeline.com/">PennEast</a> project, planned in Pennsylvania and his state. “It was a big giant bubble company that exploded and lots of people went to jail. Companies like Enron are the ones that set this FERC policy, and it’s part of the reason why it’s so bad.”</p>
<p>For the agency, customer contracts for pipelines are “strong evidence” of what the market wants. Since 1999, it has never denied a project that had them. The two it rejected did not.</p>
<p>Pipeline company executives believe this makes sense. No developer would sink potentially billions of dollars into an unnecessary project, they say. No utility or other gas shipper would pay millions of dollars for unneeded capacity.</p>
<p>But relying on contracts to judge need can be problematic. The Appalachian pipelines illustrate that.</p>
<p>First off, some of them are getting eminent-domain authority to take gas out of the country — there simply isn’t enough domestic demand, analysts say, which is something FERC does not consider.</p>
<p>Three new or pending Appalachian pipelines have space set aside for gas going to Canada. Another <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3891653-WB-Xpress-Reference-to-Cove-Point-2015.html">played up</a> its proximity to Dominion’s nearly complete <a href="https://www.dominionenergy.com/covepoint">export terminal</a> in Maryland. Even projects pitched as purely domestic might not end up that way — pipelines interconnect.</p>
<p>Beyond that, <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kvuT-cNW0zhnZGnqPLkFn9vJMunaFSZqUVyY3UYxq8k/edit#gid=0">many of these pipeline contracts</a> have an incestuous quality. Companies are building them for their own subsidiaries — mostly electric or gas utilities and gas producers. It’s as if one hand wrote the contract and the other signed it.</p>
<p>Industry experts say this trend increases the risk of overbuilding. One reason is that interstate pipelines are more profitable than power plants and other infrastructure that utilities erect for themselves.</p>
<p>“It’s a nice way to make money,” said Greg Lander of <a href="http://english.skippingstone.com/index.php/greg-lander-president/">Skipping Stone</a>, a gas- and electric-industry consulting firm. “The market need isn’t there.”</p>
<p>Lander’s firm, hired by an environmental group to examine PennEast, <a href="http://rethinkenergynj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PennEastNotNeeded.pdf">found</a> no economic justification for the pipeline, which will mostly serve utilities and other firms owned by the developers. The New Jersey <a href="http://www.nj.gov/rpa/">agency</a> representing utility customers is also skeptical.</p>
<p>“NJ Rate Counsel is concerned that … the ‘need’ for the Project appears to be driven more by the search for higher returns on investment than any actual deficiency in gas supply,” the agency <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3889497-New-Jersey-Rate-Counsel-Comments-on-PennEast.html">wrote</a> to FERC last year.</p>
<p>It urged FERC to examine whether the contracts reflected true demand. FERC didn’t. Instead, it gave the pipeline a preliminary thumbs-up, the last step before approval.</p>
<p>PennEast spokeswoman Patricia Kornick said the project would improve reliability and ease price fluctuations. Companies signed up “because they recognize the need for an abundant, reliable, clean energy source,” she wrote in an email.</p>
<p>Het Shah, who leads natural gas market research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a consulting firm, said the Appalachian boom isn’t just about new pipelines, but also older ones turning flow around to push gas out of the region. It’s “definitely an overbuild,” he said, but he sees a strategy driving it — exports.</p>
<p>U.S. gas moved by pipeline to Canada and Mexico <a href="https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9132us2a.htm">tripled</a> in the past decade, with more coming. There’s also a <a href="https://energy.gov/articles/us-department-energy-authorizes-golden-pass-export-liquefied-natural-gas-golden-pass">rush to build</a> liquefied natural gas terminals to ship product overseas.</p>
<p>International markets could help Appalachian producers <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2016/02/17/drilling-downturn-hits-marcellus-shale-industry-hard/">battered</a> by <a href="http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/01/oil_and_gas_drillers_facing_ba.html">low prices</a>. But it makes landowners along pipeline routes livid. They don’t see how it’s in the public “convenience and necessity” to seize private property in America so firms can make money selling gas outside the country.</p>
<p>That’s what people told FERC about Northern Access 2016, a Pennsylvania-to-New York pipeline that would feed much of its gas to Canadian markets. The commissioners <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/CalendarFiles/20170203194955-CP15-115-000.pdf">said</a> in February that this was a matter for the Energy Department — not noting that the other agency <a href="https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/11/f34/ord3912.pdf">automatically approves</a> exports to Canada.</p>
<p>The point, FERC said, was that all the capacity had been contracted. It approved the pipeline.</p>
<p><strong>The fight on the ground</strong></p>
<p>The policy debates around pipelines can seem far away to those living in isolated communities in west-central Virginia, the epicenter of opposition to the Atlantic Coast project. Residents who don’t consider themselves environmentalists don “NO PIPELINE” T-shirts and hats and routinely show up at opposition rallies.</p>
<p>In Virginia, as in many places on proposed construction routes, the threat of eminent domain fuels this fight. Landowners say they object to the idea that companies can take private property — seizing permanent pathways, 75 feet wide or more — for corporate gain. They say the one-time payments they’re offered don’t make up for what they’re losing.</p>
<p>These landowners include Becci Harmon, a drug-and-alcohol program officer from Swoope, whose house sits within 50 feet of the Atlantic Coast route; she fears the one-acre plot on which she’s lived for 26 years will turn into a gutter after the pipeline wipes out her trees, garden and septic system. Richard Averitt, an entrepreneur from Nellysford, believes it will jeopardize his plan to develop an “eco-friendly” resort after it cuts the wooded, 100-acre site in half.</p>
<p>“This pipeline in particular is so egregious. It’s 95 percent virgin land,” Averitt said. “It’s land privately owned or in the public trust.”</p>
<p>Atlantic Coast became an issue in Virginia’s recent gubernatorial primary, but Dominion and Duke say supporters outnumber opponents. The companies point to recent polling by an <a href="https://consumerenergyalliance.org/about/our-members/">energy industry group</a> that includes Dominion among its members. Its survey shows that 55 percent of residents back the project while 30 percent oppose it. They also cite a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3766801-April-4-2017-WVVANC-FERC.html">letter</a>, signed by 16 state lawmakers from Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia, urging FERC officials to approve the pipeline. Last month, a New York watchdog group released a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3760585-AtlanticCoastPipelineReport-Copy-Embargoed-Until.html">report </a>revealing that five of the signatories are top recipients of either Dominion’s or Duke’s political contributions.</p>
<p>Supporters writing<a href="http://www.richmond.com/opinion/their-opinion/guest-columnists/ward-burton-how-environmental-stewardship-and-pipeline-development-can-co/article_fef2adf9-5356-5389-b3eb-786ba81490cb.html"> op-eds</a> distributed by the companies include landowner Ward Burton. He was impressed that Dominion altered the project’s route to avoid crossing a creek twice and a forest once on the 565 acres in Blackstone, Virginia, owned by his wildlife foundation.</p>
<p>Unions are eager to see the pipeline move ahead. “We’re going to put people to work,” said Matthew Yonka, president of the Virginia State Building &amp; Construction Trades Council.</p>
<p>Still, there can be localized problems. The <a href="http://www.energytransfer.com/ops_etrover.aspx">Rover</a> pipeline, which runs from Pennsylvania to Michigan, racked up more than $900,000 in proposed penalties from Ohio regulators after FERC approved it in February. <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3891736-Ohio-EPA-Final-Orders.html">Officials say</a> its owner, Energy Transfer Partners, kept spilling drilling fluid into wetlands, ponds and streams — including, in one case, several million gallons of a clay mixture tinged with petroleum.</p>
<p>Energy Transfer’s Alexis Daniel said the company considers land restoration “a top priority” and is working to resolve the matter. Craig W. Butler, who heads the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, said the company claimed the state has no authority to penalize it.&nbsp; He’s grateful FERC intervened: It’s halted certain drilling work on the pipeline while <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/media/statements-speeches/lafleur/2017/06-01-17-lafleur.asp#.WVo-2YTyuUl">investigating</a> the damage.</p>
<p>Some states, less impressed with FERC’s process, have pushed back. New York regulators denied necessary water permits for two pipelines, the Constitution <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/press/105941.html">last year</a> and Northern Access <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/press/109767.html">in April</a>. Both projects <a href="http://constitutionpipeline.com/constitution-pipeline-challenges-decision-by-new-york-state-to-block-federally-approved-pipeline/">are on hold</a> as the <a href="http://www.natfuel.com/supply/NorthernAccess2016/docs/4-10-17%20NYS%20Exec%20Branch%20denies%20permits%20for%20NA.pdf">developers wait</a> for a federal appeals court to decide whether the denials can stand. In its most recent <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/permits_ej_operations_pdf/northaccesspipe42017.pdf">permit rejection</a>, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said “FERC disregarded the Department’s concerns.” Based on its experiences with gas pipeline construction, the state agency predicted “significant degradation of water quality in stream after stream.”</p>
<p>U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat from New Jersey, wants to see reforms earlier in the process — when FERC is still deliberating. Pressed by residents upset about PennEast, she sponsored <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2649/text">legislation</a> in May that would require evidentiary hearings in contested cases and regular, big-picture reviews of need.</p>
<p>Absent a state veto or major changes at FERC, there’s little a landowner can do to stop the construction juggernaut, as Jeb Bell learned. He and his brother didn’t want the Sabal Trail pipeline burrowing beneath their tree farm in Mitchell County, Georgia, so the company took them to court twice — first to get permission to survey the land and then to build on it. Sabal Trail, largely owned by Enbridge, won each time. It also fought off the Bells’ counterclaim contending the company had trespassed on their land.</p>
<p>Then the company <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3883789-Order-Regarding-Bells-First-Appeal.html">won the right</a> to collect legal fees from the Bells — $47,258 in all.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Enbridge spokeswoman Andrea Grover said by email that Sabal Trail is entitled to the money because it had offered to settle the “baseless” trespass claim; the brothers turned it down.</p>
<p>Bell, a state-park manager, has no idea how he’ll pay if his appeal fails. He can’t imagine a multibillion-dollar company needing his money. What it wanted, he’s sure, was to send a warning to other landowners: Don’t even try to stop pipelines. They always win.</p>
<p><em>Marie Cusick of StateImpact Pennsylvania contributed to this story.</em></p>
Kristen Lombardihttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/kristen-lombardiJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsThe invisible hazard afflicting thousands of schoolshttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20716Nearly 8,000 public schools sit close to busy roads, putting kids and teachers at risk from traffic exhaust that can harm health.United States Environmental Protection Agency;Smog;Air pollution;Pollution;Air pollution in the United States;Dust;Particulates;Diesel exhaust;Truck;Atmosphere of Earth2017-02-20T14:23:22-05:002017-02-17T05:00:00-05:00<p>CULVER CITY, California — Interstate 405 is one of the nation’s busiest highways, with more than 300,000 vehicles speeding, crawling or outright stopped each day on the 10 lanes cutting through this Los Angeles suburb. Yards away sits an elementary school, where students and teachers breathe air tainted by all those tailpipes.</p>
<p>Parents at El Marino Language School understood the health risks and were determined to do something. Five years ago, they organized. They cleaned the soot that settled on their children’s desks. They brought in pollution-trapping plants. They pressed for high-grade air filters, taking their own air measurements, trooping into school board meetings to make their case and finally last summer getting what they’d asked for. “It took an army,” said parent Rania Sabty-Daily.</p>
<p>In&nbsp;traffic-clogged Southern California, plenty of people grasp the dangers of kids attending class close to busy roads&nbsp;and their largely invisible clouds of air pollution. But that's not&nbsp;nearly so well understood in the rest of the country&nbsp;— even though the problem stretches from coast to coast.</p>
<p>Nearly 8,000 U.S. public schools lie within 500 feet of highways, truck routes and other roads with significant traffic, according to a joint investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/">Reveal</a> from The Center for Investigative Reporting. That’s about one in every 11 public schools, serving roughly 4.4 million students and spread across every state in the nation. Thousands more private schools and Head Start centers are in the same fix.</p>
<p>Pollution is higher on and near busy roads, a <a href="https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/P100NFFD.PDF?Dockey=P100NFFD.PDF" target="_blank">toxic mix</a> that can stunt <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11034-traffic-exposure-disrupts-teen-lung-development/">lung growth</a>, trigger <a href="https://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/newsrelease.php?id=717">asthma attacks</a>, contribute to <a href="http://oehha.ca.gov/air/press-release/press-release-air/study-finds-long-term-exposure-ultrafine-particle-air-pollution">heart disease</a> and raise the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-airpollution-kids-leukemia-idUSKCN0S02Q520151006">risk</a> of <a href="https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf">cancer</a>. Newer research suggests that what’s spewed out of tailpipes may also harm children’s <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001792">ability to learn</a> and could play a role in <a href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1408322/">brain maladies</a> <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32399-6/abstract">associated</a> with old age. Almost everyone gets a dose on a regular basis — tiny particles that batter the body’s defenses, carcinogens like benzene, chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — but the people living, working or trying to learn very close to roads with heavy traffic get more. And more is worse for health, especially among children.</p>
<p>“The expectation of every parent is that they’re sending their child to a safe environment," said George Thurston, a population-health professor at the New York University School of Medicine. "And with this kind of pollution, they’re not.”</p>
<p>Certain types of air pollution announce themselves. London’s <a href="http://today.tamu.edu/2016/11/14/researchers-solve-mystery-of-historic-1952-london-fog-and-current-chinese-haze/" target="_blank">killer 1952 fog</a> that blacked out the sun. California’s historic <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/2014/07/14/sustainability/we-used-be-china/la-smog-battle-against-air-pollution">brown smog</a>. Beijing’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/world/asia/beijing-air-pollution.html?_r=0">gray air</a>, so poisonous that it keeps children indoors and shortens lives. But we usually can’t see the pollution coming from our roads, so it’s easy to miss.</p>
<p>A nationwide changeover to vehicles that don’t pollute would be the ultimate fix, but that won’t come soon. Even a thus-far successful federal mandate to reduce the worst of that pollution, from big rigs and other diesel trucks, is still roughly a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259658-EPA-Publication-in-2000-About-the-2007-Diesel.html" target="_blank">dozen years away</a> from taking full effect — when today’s kindergartners graduate from high school. That’s because diesel engines are long-lived. Several million trucks on the road predate the standards, and no federal rules require them to be retrofitted.</p>
<p>Recognizing the risks to children, California <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=200320040SB352">banned</a> new-school construction on land within 500 feet of freeways in 2003, with exceptions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has warned school districts about traffic-pollution impacts since at least <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/school_siting_guidelines-2.pdf">2011</a> and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3409058-EPA-Report-Best-Practices-for-Reducing-Near-Road.html">recommends</a> that school districts think carefully before picking sites near major roads or truck routes.</p>
<p>But districts across the country keep doing it. Nearly one in five schools that opened in the 2014-2015 school year, the most recent the federal government has fully tracked, was built by a busy road. That’s worse than the overall rate of schools near such roads — those with daily traffic of at least 30,000 vehicles or with a minimum of 10,000 vehicles but at least 500 trucks, the threshold the Center and Reveal used to define a busy thoroughfare.</p>
<p>“A lot of schools are built on cheap land,” said Tolle Graham, labor and environment coordinator for the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health. “That’s part of the problem of why they get located where they do.”</p>
<p>Another reason: School districts and parent groups largely don’t know there’s a problem, according to interviews with school groups, teachers’ unions and public-health experts. As a result, there’s no widespread effort by districts to clean the air inside schools already impacted by substantial traffic,&nbsp;even though studies at California schools show that high-grade air filters make a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3410783-Study-SCAQMD-Study-of-High-Performance-Air.html">marked difference</a> and the EPA <a href="http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/ochp_2015_near_road_pollution_booklet_v16_508.pdf" target="_blank">recommends</a> them.</p>
<p>Southern California’s air agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, earmarked settlements from polluting companies and other funds to cover the cost of such filtration at about 80 schools near freeways or&nbsp;other pollution sources. Nothing’s preventing other states from following the same model.</p>
<p>“The technology is well established, the installation is straightforward and the maintenance is simple,” said district spokesman Sam Atwood, who doesn’t recall officials from other states getting in touch to learn from his agency’s experience.</p>
<p>Darryl Alexander, the American Federation of Teachers’ health, safety and wellness director, said federal incentives would help. The EPA released a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3409058-EPA-Report-Best-Practices-for-Reducing-Near-Road.html">guide</a> in 2015 for reducing road pollution at schools, but school districts are under no obligation to follow it, assuming they even know it exists. The U.S. Department of Education, noting that school buildings are funded with state and local money, declined to say whether it makes recommendations about school siting or sets any requirements.</p>
<p><strong>The schools beside the highways, byways</strong></p>
<p>Big cities, where empty land is a rarity and traffic much harder to avoid, are the places you’re most likely to find a school near a busy road. New York and Los Angeles, unsurprisingly, top the list.</p>
<p>But thousands of these schools are located in small and mid-sized cities, suburbs and rural towns all across the country. Multiple schools are squeezed next to well-used roads in Newark — where residents are battling for clean-air improvements around their truck-heavy port — as well as in Memphis and Milwaukee, Albuquerque and Cleveland, Wichita and Anchorage.</p>
<p>The impact varies, because each situation is unique. The number, type and age of the vehicles passing by, whether they’re moving at a constant speed or braking and accelerating, whether the wind frequently or rarely blows from the road to the school — each of these factors makes a difference. A congested local road could be worse than a highway.</p>
<p>The problem affects all sorts of kids,&nbsp;but&nbsp;is more pronounced&nbsp;in predominantly minority or low-income schools, driven largely by where public school students live.</p>
<p>Though minority and white students are equally likely to attend public schools in suburbs, where about 2,600 schools lie near busy roads, there’s an urban-rural divide. Minority students are much more likely than white students to attend public school in big cities, which account for nearly 3,000 schools near such&nbsp;roads. And they’re a lot less likely than white students to attend class in rural areas, where traffic is generally lighter.&nbsp;Big cities serve a higher percentage of low-income students, too.</p>
<p>That’s the major reason for a striking difference, according to the Center/Reveal analysis: 15 percent of schools where more than three-quarters of the students are racial or ethnic minorities are located near a busy road, compared with just 4 percent of schools where the demographics are reversed. And though the gap isn’t as wide, schools with more than three-quarters of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches are also more likely to sit near such roads.</p>
<p>That’s troubling not only because the pollutants are bad for health generally, but also because they’re particularly bad for asthmatics — and <a href="http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/asthma-disproportionately-affects-179902">low-income</a> and <a href="http://www.aafa.org/page/burden-of-asthma-on-minorities.aspx">minority children</a> have higher rates of asthma. Some studies suggest that traffic pollution is, in fact, one of the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/traffic-pollution-and-asthma/">causes of asthma</a>.</p>
<p>Charter schools are part of the traffic-disparity story. They’re more likely to serve minority and low-income students and to be located in cities, and they’re far more likely than traditional public schools to be near busy roads. They can be found in shopping centers, old <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article13039871.html">warehouse buildings</a> and other spots that were built with commerce — and traffic — in mind.</p>
<p>But what looms much larger is how decades-old discriminatory decisions by officials continue to play a role in who gets exposed to more traffic pollution today. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/">Redlining</a>, the racist lending that was official federal policy until 1968, shaped American neighborhoods in ways that <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law">still persist</a>. The post-World War II highway boom exploded <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/defeating-the-legacy-of-highways-rammed-through-poor-neighborhoods/2016/03/28/ffcfb5ae-f2a1-11e5-a61f-e9c95c06edca_story.html?utm_term=.7fede8dcdbc8">through minority neighborhoods</a> across the country.</p>
<p>Gilbert Estrada, an assistant professor at Long Beach City College in California who studied the history of freeways in the Los Angeles area, said Mexican-American communities took the brunt of that construction there. Wealthier places used their greater political clout to scuttle freeways near them. Costs pressed state officials to go where the land values were cheapest. That’s had health and learning implications for generations of children.</p>
<p>“The studies have shown the students can’t concentrate, that they have <a href="http://www.econweb.umd.edu/~ham/test%20scores%20submit.pdf">lower test scores</a>, … that they have higher rates of asthma,” said Estrada, who grew up in Commerce, California, a community split by two major freeways. “These are pollutants that can <a href="http://kvpr.org/post/central-valleys-air-pollution-affecting-our-cells-and-genes" target="_blank">transform</a> <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0037412">your DNA</a>. … You just can’t take that back.”</p>
<p><strong>The parents and the freeway</strong></p>
<p>The teachers were worried first.</p>
<p>At El Marino Language School in Culver City, on the western edge of Los Angeles, educators could hear the omnipresent <em>shoooosh </em>of traffic on the 405. They could see the dark dust that collected on surfaces — “no matter how many times we dusted or swept or mopped,” said Cristina Paul, who taught second grade there until last summer. They particularly raised concerns when the 405 was widened about a decade ago, bringing it even closer to the school. But not much happened until the parents started to worry, too.</p>
<p>Among them were Rania Sabty-Daily, who’d fortuitously earned a Ph.D. in environmental health sciences, and Stephon Litwinczuk, a filmmaker who knew the freeway would not be good for his twin sons, both of whom have a lung condition called reactive airway disease. The parents faced headwinds when they started down this path five years ago: Assumptions that ocean breezes kept the air clean. Concerns from nearby residents that discussing the problem would lower their home values. And, of course, cost — because the school has no central air conditioning, air filtering would be harder and more expensive to do.</p>
<p>The parents and teachers who joined forces decided that success would lie in convincing people there was indeed a problem, but that there were constructive steps they could take together. Sabty-Daily borrowed university equipment that measures ultrafine particles — the smallest of the too-small-to-see specks that spike near roads, and which health researchers are <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/04/study-ultrafine-particles-details-health-risk-living-near-highways/5QbVELgmlxGc05NXfg0qmO/story.html">particularly worried about</a> — and showed that&nbsp;the sea breezes actually were&nbsp;blowing road pollution toward the school. Parents wiped down classrooms with microfiber cloths to clear out both the visible and invisible remnants of the road. Litwinczuk made videos to keep everyone in the loop. Christina Dronen, another volunteer, started a no-idling campaign and filled her daughter’s classroom with air-cleaning plants as she waited for the filters she couldn’t believe weren’t already in place.</p>
<p>Parents went to school board meetings — lots of them — and worked to elect more receptive board members. They started a PTA committee and teamed up with their supportive principal. They campaigned for a bond measure to get money for a schoolwide filtration and air-conditioning system.</p>
<p>Even after voters <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Culver_City_Unified_School_District_Bond_Issue,_Measure_CC_(June_2014)">approved</a> the bond measure in June 2014, it remained a slog. Dronen’s daughter started and ended second grade the next school year with no air filtration system. That spring, a friend abruptly pulled her children out of El Marino and shared the public-health studies that convinced her — the links to childhood cancer, slower cognitive development and lung problems. Dronen read them and made a wrenching decision: That fall, she would send her daughter to another school.</p>
<p>If she didn’t and her daughter’s health suffered, “I felt like I would never be able to live with it. So I pulled her out. I spoke in front of the school board … ‘Year after year, she’s there, and you keep saying “someday.” ’ ”</p>
<p>Another year went by after that. But last summer, the filtration system started going in.</p>
<p>Mike Reynolds, assistant superintendent of business services at the Culver City Unified School District and a supportive voice for the El Marino efforts, understands why some parents got frustrated. Launching a school construction project “takes forever,” he said. Workers had to retrofit the heating system to install the filters, and this summer they will add air conditioning so teachers can keep doors and windows closed. Total cost: $2.5 million.</p>
<p>The campus opened in 1952 — predating the 405 — and has classroom doors that open directly outside. Exactly what you don’t want when you have several hundred thousand pollution sources passing by every day.</p>
<p>El Marino’s project doesn’t fix the outdoor air the kids breathe while playing at recess or eating lunch. But the South Coast air district <a href="http://www.cleanairem.org/CleanAirEM/Action_files/2014_Clean_Air_El_Marino_Air_Quality_Measurements_Results_AQMD.pdf" target="_blank">found</a> that a test run of filters in an El Marino classroom, conducted before the full system went in, removed more than 90 percent of unhealthy particles indoors — similar to the effect the agency <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/ceqa/handbook/aqmdpilotstudyfinalreport.pdf?sfvrsn=0" target="_blank">found</a> at other schools that installed high-grade air filters. To put that into context: Just 20 to 50 percent of the particles were caught by schools’ earlier efforts, according to the agency.</p>
<p>That’s good for the kids, some of whom are there 12 hours a day, including before- and after-school care. It’s good for the employees, too, because they’re also breathing that air.</p>
<p>Roberta Sergant, a longtime El Marino teacher active in the clean-air effort, was diagnosed with breast cancer six months after she retired. She wonders whether carcinogens from the freeway’s 300,000-plus vehicles a day — including more than 8,000 trucks — <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101006104003.htm" target="_blank">played a role</a>. Years before her diagnosis, she’d had genetic testing that showed that despite her mother’s breast cancer, “I had no gene that was an alarm for cancer at all.”</p>
<p>She understands why people worked so hard to do something about the air. Families love the school, which offers language immersion programs in Japanese and Spanish. Her own grandchildren are at El Marino.</p>
<p>So is Dronen’s kindergarten-age son. Getting her daughter re-enrolled has proved challenging, but she’s hoping that will work out, too. The school has filters now — that made all the difference for her.</p>
<p><strong>Visible and invisible risks</strong></p>
<p>New cars and trucks are much cleaner than those built decades ago, thanks to federal rules for vehicles and fuel — once, tailpipes used to pump out brain-damaging lead. Still, there’s a lot more traffic on the roads now, and it remains a major source of U.S. air pollution.</p>
<p>Some of our exhaust feeds climate problems: A quarter of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in 2014 came from transportation, the lion’s share of that from vehicles on the road, according to the EPA. Then there are the unhealthy chemicals and tiny particles that affect more than just our lungs.</p>
<p>“Once it gets into your body, gets into the blood, it’s off to the races,” said Ed Avol, a professor in the University of Southern California’s Department of Preventive Medicine, part of a team that has conducted sustained research on the health effects of living and attending school near traffic. “All body systems are at risk.”</p>
<p>There’s a federal standard for small particles, ones measured at less than 10 microns (roughly one-seventh the width of a single hair), as well as for tiny particles, ones measured at less than 2.5 microns (one-thirtieth the width of that hair). But there’s nothing for the smallest of all — <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/clean-air-plans/air-quality-management-plans/2012-air-quality-management-plan/final-carb-epa-sip-dec2012/2012-aqmp-carb-epa-sip-submittal-ch-9.pdf" target="_blank">ultrafine</a> particles, less than a tenth of a micron.</p>
<p>Research in recent years suggests that ultrafines could be <a href="https://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/sites/default/files/ssn_basic_facts_brugge_on_particulate_air_pollution.pdf">worse for health</a> in many ways than their larger cousins because they can slip into the bloodstream, bringing toxic materials with them. These are the particles that spike near roads, along with other types of traffic pollution such as <a href="https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=31" target="_blank">volatile organic compounds</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s not enough exposure data to determine the full health impact because there’s so little ultrafine monitoring, said Philip K. Hopke, distinguished professor emeritus at Clarkson University in New York. Hopke, a former chairman of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, said he’s pressed the agency to set up a nationwide network. The EPA said in a statement that it has encouraged states to measure, and several do, but it does not require monitoring because there’s no ultrafine air-quality standard.</p>
<p>“We can’t have a standard if we don’t have data, but we don’t have data because we don’t have a standard so there’s no need to spend money on making measurements,” Hopke said. “We’ve got to find a way of breaking the catch-22.”</p>
<p>The good news about bad particles is fewer of them are now coming from diesel trucks. Diesel engines made in and after the 2007 model year are much cleaner than earlier versions, the result of more stringent <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259658-EPA-Publication-in-2000-About-the-2007-Diesel.html">EPA rules</a>.</p>
<p>But lots of old, dirty trucks remain on the road. More than 60 percent of diesel trucks registered in the U.S. predate the cleaner-engine standards, <a href="http://dieselforum.org/about-clean-diesel/trucking">according</a> to the Diesel Technology Forum. The Texas A&amp;M Transportation Institute, estimating the typical mix of vehicles on the roads today, calculated that a heavy-duty diesel truck puts out 63 times the fine particles of a gasoline car on a highway. That rises to 129 times the fine particles when on a road with stop signs or traffic lights, because accelerating trucks put out more pollution.</p>
<p>The EPA has funneled grants totaling hundreds of millions of dollars toward replacing old diesel school buses, trucks and other equipment since 2008, but the <a href="https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/P100OHMK.PDF?Dockey=P100OHMK.PDF" target="_blank">Diesel Emissions Reduction Act</a>, which authorized that money, lapsed last year. The program has some funding for now because prior-year levels were temporarily extended to give Congress more time to approve a budget, but its fate is uncertain.</p>
<p>New regulations to address traffic pollution don’t look likely, either. President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/30/trump-wants-to-cut-two-regulations-on-businesses-for-every-new-one-imposed/?utm_term=.75332b70792f">signed</a> an executive order requiring that the federal government get rid of two rules for every new one adopted, his EPA transition-team leader called for <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-epa-plans-20170126-story.html">deep cuts at the agency</a> and Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/01/24/donald-trump-tells-detroit-auto-ceos-environmental-regulations-are-out-of-control/?utm_term=.8fc01360e01c">told</a> auto executives in January that environmental regulations are “out of control.” An auto industry group already has <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2016/11/10/cafe-standards/93603504/">asked</a> the administration to loosen higher fuel economy requirements — which have a side benefit of reducing air pollution — that are due to phase in through 2025.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For schools near busy roads, that increases the importance of local efforts such as better air filtration. But the <a href="http://www.pta.org/">National PTA</a> couldn’t find examples of parents working on the issue. Though some school districts are, the National Association of State Boards of Education thinks it’s not on most school officials’ radar yet, either.</p>
<p>“It’s really an invisible problem,” said Paul, the schoolteacher who previously worked at El Marino. “It would be different if it were a public health and safety problem that were presenting itself physically and visually. If all of our toilets were overflowing, then people would be so upset.”</p>
<p><strong>The port’s neighbors</strong></p>
<p>The problem is more obvious in some places. Take the Ironbound. It’s a Newark neighborhood known for its Portuguese restaurants, large immigrant communities and ongoing battle with trucks. They’re inescapable here: container trucks, delivery trucks, trash trucks and sewage trucks, passing by schools, rumbling down narrow roads, blocking streets.</p>
<p>The Newark community abuts the Port of New York and New Jersey, third-largest seaport in the country, and some of the trucks are going to or coming from there. Others are connected with businesses that want to be near the port or find the location convenient for other reasons, like the fast hop to Interstate 95. Most of the trucks are old, which means they pump out more of the unhealthy particles that are bad for the lungs, heart and likely the brain. This older diesel exhaust can also <a href="https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf" target="_blank">cause cancer</a>, unlike what <a href="https://www.healtheffects.org/publication/executive-summary-advanced-collaborative-emissions-study-aces" target="_blank">research</a> suggests about the exhaust from newer engines.</p>
<p>Diesel particle levels are higher in the Ironbound than in the vast majority of the country, particularly the section closest to the port, according to EPA estimates. The same is true of the respiratory health risks from bad air. On the EPA’s <a href="https://ejscreen.epa.gov/mapper/index.html?wherestr=newark%2C+nj" target="_blank">Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool</a>, that’s represented as a mass of orange and red layered over the community, like a bloody wound.</p>
<p>“Living down here,” said Tamika Bowers, “is a stressful situation.”</p>
<p>She and her 10-year-old son, Tíyonn, both have asthma. She sleeps with her rescue inhaler under her pillow. Tíyonn needs medication to keep his lungs working properly and struggles with congestion. He feels safer inside, figuring the air is better, but he’s never far from the trucks.</p>
<p>They rumble past Hawkins Street School, the elementary/middle school he attends — an estimated 585 trucks a day on a two-lane road, along with roughly 11,000 other vehicles. They idle, like the truck outside school as Tíyonn left that day in December, pumping out gray smoke he could smell. Airplanes headed to the nearby Newark Liberty International Airport fly low over his school every couple of minutes, adding more <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0529-lax-pollution-20140529-story.html" target="_blank">pollution</a> and noise.</p>
<p>“It’s so bad,” Tíyonn said, “I feel like we should have moved.”</p>
<p>Some in this working-class community with a mix of narrow, modest homes and public housing can’t afford to do that. Some don’t want to be driven out of a place they love, where many speak more than one language and the <a href="https://www.newjerseycommunitycapital.org/sites/default/files/Measuring%20the%20State%20of%20Newark's%20Neighborhoods_2014.pdf" target="_blank">crime rate</a> ranks among the lowest of Newark’s neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Kim Gaddy, a Newark school board member and environmental-justice organizer, thinks too many kids and adults in the city are exposed to unhealthy levels of traffic pollution, particularly in the Ironbound and in the South Ward neighborhoods that are also close to the port. Gaddy, a South Ward resident, has asthma and so do all three of her children. No one appears to track child asthma rates in Newark, but the best guess — the one <a href="http://www.ci.newark.nj.us/news/mayor-ras-j-baraka-signs-measure-banning-smoking-city-parks-expanding-buffer-zones-around-municipal-buildings-kasberger-field/" target="_blank">repeated</a> by <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-01/documents/citizen_science_toolbox_ironbound_community_fact_sheet_1.pdf" target="_blank">officials</a> — is that one in four children in the city has it. The asthma hospitalization rate for all ages, something New Jersey does track, was nearly three times higher in Newark than in the rest of the state in 2015.</p>
<p>“We have to look at this as a health injustice,” Gaddy said. “Our children, their life is on the line because we can’t escape the diesel.”</p>
<p>Driving around her neighborhood recently, pointing out the trucks and truck-intensive businesses, she paused outside the B.R.I.C.K. Peshine Academy school. Students were outside for recess, playing in the biting cold. Across the street and down a hill was Interstate 78, where roughly 160,000 vehicles, including more than 11,000 trucks, pass by every day.</p>
<p>The hill is good: The EPA has <a href="https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/P100NFFD.PDF?Dockey=P100NFFD.PDF" target="_blank">found</a> that below-grade roads reduce the impact of traffic pollution nearby. (Hawkins Street School has no such luck, and its road is even closer, with a traffic light that guarantees pollution spikes from acceleration.) But the number of trucks on I-78 is unusually high.</p>
<p>All told, about 40 public schools in Newark — roughly 40 percent — are within 500 feet of a busy road.</p>
<p>John M. Abeigon, president of the Newark Teachers Union, has no doubt that proximity is unhealthy. He moved his family from the Ironbound to a Newark suburb in 1997 after his daughter developed asthma, and her symptoms quickly cleared up. But he says no one should expect the school district to find the money for high-grade air filters.</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s not going to happen here,” he said. “They don’t have $75 for a water filter to <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/some-newark-new-jersey-schools-needed-new-lead-filters-years-ago-photographs-show">keep lead out</a> of the students’ drinking water.”</p>
<p>The Newark school district said its schools do have air filters and change them regularly, but they’re run-of-the-mill, regardless of whether a pollution source is nearby. That meets state requirements, schools spokesman Paul Nedeau wrote in an email. But this is a city that has long struggled with pollution, he said, and the district is eager to work with partners to improve conditions in and around its schools.</p>
<p>Among the most active local groups on pollution issues is the nonprofit Ironbound Community Corp., which thinks schools and residents shouldn’t have to pay for the air-quality problems they didn’t create. For more than a decade, ICC staffers and volunteers have called on the Port of New York and New Jersey — the destination for 9,000 trucks a day — to do more.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.panynj.gov/about/pdf/PTP_November2016.pdf">About 62 percent</a> of the trucks that go to and from the port predate the stricter 2007 engine standards. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey <a href="http://www.panynj.gov/press-room/press-item.cfm?headLine_id=1267">said</a> in 2010 that it would bar those trucks in January 2017, but last year it weakened the plan. Old trucks not already serving the port are prohibited, but a ban affecting the current stock won’t kick in until next year — and only on trucks from 1995 or earlier.</p>
<p>Molly Campbell, director of port commerce for the authority, blamed it on lack of funding. The authority doesn’t have the money to assist all the people with older trucks, she said, many of whom are one-man independent contractors.</p>
<p>That sounds like a cop-out to Ana Baptista, an assistant professor at the New School in New York and a Hawkins Street graduate who previously led environmental-justice efforts at the ICC. The ports of <a href="https://www.portoflosangeles.org/ctp/idx_ctp.asp" target="_blank">Los Angeles</a> and <a href="http://www.polb.com/environment/cleantrucks/" target="_blank">Long Beach</a> in California — the only two larger than New York’s and New Jersey’s — banned pre-2007 trucks five years ago, cutting their diesel particle pollution <a href="https://www.portoflosangeles.org/newsroom/2017_releases/news_011117_Clean%20Air%20Plan%20Workshop.pdf" target="_blank">more than 80 percent</a>. Those ports also set aside funds for air filtration in schools, something the New York and New Jersey port said it has not done.</p>
<p>Campbell, who came from the Los Angeles port, points out that California ultimately required all older diesel trucks, not just those bound for ports, to get anti-pollution retrofits or get off the road. It’s the only state to do so, and she thinks that makes more sense than demanding that one employer do better.</p>
<p>Still, nothing like that is in the works in New Jersey or New York. In December, when the port authority and the EPA held an air pollution “<a href="http://www.panynj.gov/about/pdf/port-environmental-listening-session-transcript.pdf">listening session</a>” in Newark, dozens of people from the Ironbound, the South Ward and other communities filed in to say they’re confident the authority — a quasi-governmental agency with a $3 billion operating budget — is not doing what it could and should.</p>
<p>Two elected officials said the port must move <a href="http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2016/Bills/S3000/2507_I1.PDF">more expeditiously</a> to help the people breathing in the exhaust of this regional economic engine. People repeatedly pointed to clean-air efforts at the California ports. Several called for air filtration and pollution-trapping trees. Baptista said the port authority is spending big on capital investments and must make clean air a priority as well.</p>
<p>“Just this week, another child died from asthma here in the city of Newark,” said Amy Goldsmith with the Coalition for Healthy Ports. Gaddy told the officials that her brother-in-law died of an asthma attack five minutes from the port. “It is time,” said the ICC’s Molly Greenberg, to cheers and applause, “that people stop having to pay with their lives.”</p>
<p><em>Hopkins reported this story with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/event/2016-national-health-journalism-fellowship" target="_blank"><em>National Fellowship</em></a><em>, programs of the University of Southern California&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/" target="_blank"><em>Center for Health Journalism</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><em>Center for Public Integrity news developer Chris Zubak-Skees contributed to this story.</em></p>
Students line up outside El Marino Language School as vehicles zoom by&nbsp;on Interstate 405 in Culver City, California.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkins‘This very dangerous road divides us’http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20719The health hazard posed by traffic is invisible. The safety hazard is all too obvious.2017-02-17T05:01:43-05:002017-02-17T04:59:00-05:00<p>BURLINGTON, New Jersey — The <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/02/17/20716/invisible-hazard-afflicting-thousands-schools?=ere">health hazard</a> posed by traffic is invisible. The safety hazard is all too obvious, especially here.</p>
<p>Nearly 8,000 U.S. public schools sit close to busy roads, and in some cases, students must cross those lanes to get to class. In Burlington, northeast of Philadelphia, hundreds of students walk across a road the nonprofit Tri-State Transportation Campaign calls the <a href="http://tstc.org/press/2016/04062016_MDR_NJ_release.pdf">most treacherous</a> for pedestrians in all of New Jersey.</p>
<p>A four-year-old on the way home from after-school care was killed in 2008 on the road, the six-lane Route 130. A 12-year-old was badly injured in 2012 while riding his bike across it. And last May, a 17-year-old sophomore who didn’t even have a foot on the road was <a href="http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/crime/2016/05/22/burlington-city-antwan-timbers-killed-dui-pedestrian/84750566/">fatally struck</a> by a driver who ran off the pavement.</p>
<p>“Our students are walking across this road to get to not only our schools but almost everywhere they need to go in Burlington City,” said Burlington City High School Principal Jim Flynn, whose office looks out onto Route 130. “This very dangerous road divides us.”</p>
<p>Now, it’s mobilized them. Horrified about the death of sophomore <a href="http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/2016/10/24/students-press-lower-speed-limit-deadly-highway/92670124/">Antwan Timbers Jr.</a>, his classmates have campaigned all school year for drivers to slow down, <a href="http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/allen/allen-unveils-antwans-law-supporting-petition-to-protect-pedestrians-in-school-zones-statewide/29892">inspiring</a> a state senator to propose a lower speed limit and other safety-minded changes.</p>
<p>It’s a local piece of a nationwide transportation challenge. About 100 children are killed every year while walking or biking during the times of day kids typically go to and from school, <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/safety-advisory-look-out-pedestrians-and-bicyclists-international-walk-and-bike">according</a> to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.</p>
<p>Nine years ago, New Jersey <a href="http://www.state.nj.us/transportation/community/srts/pdf/szdgchapter12.pdf">enacted a law</a> to try to stop schools being built near highway ramps, and vice versa, after the death of an 8-year-old boy outside his Newark elementary school in 1997. But it’s arterials — roads like <a href="http://www.nj.com/times-opinion/index.ssf/2013/06/opinion_njs_deadliest_road_for.html">Route 130</a> — that are the most deadly for walkers, in <a href="http://tstc.org/press/2016/04062016_MDR_NJ_release.pdf">New Jersey</a> and <a href="http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/05/dangerous-by-design-2014-21.pdf">nationwide</a>.</p>
<p>Lowering speeds around schools is one way to reduce crashes and deaths throughout the day, not just immediately before and after class, the Safe Routes to School National Partnership says.</p>
<p>In Burlington, an enclave of 10,000 that gets more than three times as much traffic on its main route, students and teachers want the speed limit permanently lowered from 40 miles per hour to 25. That’s the speed motorists are supposed drive for a few hours in the morning and afternoon when kids are most likely to be walking to and from school, but the temporary limit isn’t working.</p>
<p>When a group of students and staff clocked speeds with a radar gun one morning last fall, “nobody was going 25,” said junior Jesseca Lamont, 16. “Some people were going 50, 60 miles per hour.”</p>
<p>Students are also coming and going from the high school after hours and on weekends, when the crossing guards aren’t out and the 40 mph limit applies. Flynn said fifth- and sixth-graders cross Route 130 to get to football practice in late afternoons, and he routinely sees kids walking across the road in the dark.</p>
<p>The route is divided as it cuts past the Burlington schools, with stores tucked between the north- and southbound lanes. It’s as if students must navigate two roads rather than one, with twice the opportunities for harm.</p>
<p>Students have held a rally, made a presentation at City Hall, researched the life-and-death implications of crashes at different speeds and produced a safety video. In January they testified at a <a href="http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/allen/allens-antwans-law-bill-to-make-roads-safer-for-students-passes-senate-panel/30769">hearing</a> on state Sen. Diane Allen’s legislation.</p>
<p>“If you would go to any student in any grade, they would be like, ‘Oh, Antwan, he’s an amazing friend,’ ” said Jesseca, who knew him well as a fellow cadet in the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, and who is best friends with the young man injured on the road in 2012. “We don’t want another tragic incident.”</p>
<p><em>Hopkins reported this story with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the </em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/event/2016-national-health-journalism-fellowship" target="_blank"><em>National Fellowship</em></a><em>, programs of the University of Southern California </em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org" target="_blank"><em>Center for Health Journalism</em></a><em>.</em></p>
Drivers hurry past Burlington City High School on northbound Route 130.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsGetting under the hood: Our methodologyhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20720Here&#039;s how the Center for Public Integrity and Reveal teamed up to investigate schools near busy roads.Fiction;Under the Hood Café;Hood;Comics;Bruce Hood;Historicity2017-02-17T05:01:43-05:002017-02-17T04:59:00-05:00<p>We’re all exposed to unhealthy traffic pollutants, but people who spend a lot of time on or very near higher-traffic roads get more. The Center for Public Integrity and <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/">Reveal</a> from The Center for Investigative Reporting teamed up to look at the schools across the country that sit within 500 feet of busy roads.</p>
<p>We picked that distance because, in general, studies suggest that the biggest daytime exposures are within the first 500 feet from the road (though some studies have found elevated levels farther out, such as roughly <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1309104215301999">900 to 1,000 feet</a>). California’s <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=200320040SB352">school-siting law</a>, which aims to keep new schools away from freeways and other major routes, uses 500 feet as the area of concern.</p>
<p>The California law focuses on very heavily traveled roads, but there’s no true dividing line between bad and OK. Some studies have <a href="https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2015/713540/">found health effects</a> among <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26298587">people near roads</a> with at least 10,000 vehicles a day, which includes routes with a tiny fraction of the traffic on an L.A. freeway. In fact, because steady speeds produce less pollution than acceleration, vehicles on highways that aren’t plagued by stop-by-go congestion are cleaner than they are on lower-speed roads with traffic lights and stop signs. And a road that draws diesel trucks, particularly old trucks, could be worse than a higher-traffic route with only cars.</p>
<p>We tried to account for these complexities with our traffic thresholds. We ended up defining a “busy road” as one with average daily traffic of at least 30,000 vehicles, or 500 or more trucks and at least 10,000 total vehicles.</p>
<p>We used <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/pubschuniv.asp">schools data</a> tracked by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education. It includes latitude and longitude for every school, along with information ranging from the type of school to the demographic details on the student body. The most recent full dataset from the NCES is for the 2014-15 school year.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/hpms/shapefiles.cfm">traffic data</a> came from the Federal Highway Administration, which has average daily traffic figures for total vehicles as well as trucks on roads across the country — not just highways, but also local roads. We used 2014 traffic data for every state except Iowa. Highway administration data wasn't available in 2014 for that state, so we used 2015 data instead.</p>
<p>Staffers at both agencies answered a lot of questions for us, from how the school geocoding was done (the NCES tries to put the coordinates on top of a school building whenever possible) to how the FHWA distinguishes trucks from cars (sensors in the roads, manual counts, estimates from the states).</p>
<p>We also received help from numerous academic researchers. People who conducted studies of schools near major routes and shared their expertise include <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09640560802208173?journalCode=cjep20">Sergey Grinshpun</a> with the University of Cincinnati, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4179205/">Gregory Wellenius</a> of Brown University and <a href="https://ij-healthgeographics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-072X-10-68">Ryan Allen</a> at Simon Fraser University.</p>
<p>Other academics who offered advice on a wide range of related issues include Julian Marshall and Matthew Bechle at the University of Washington, Steve Hankey at Virginia Tech, Dr. Janet Phoenix at the George Washington University, Nicky Sheats at Thomas Edison State University, Andrea Ferro at Clarkson University, Marc Serre at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jonathan Buonocore at Harvard University, Julia Heck at UCLA and Stuart Batterman at the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>Some news organizations have covered this issue in their regions, including InvestigateWest’s excellent <a href="http://invw.org/series/exhausted-at-school/">Exhausted at School</a> series in Seattle, but we came across none that crunched the data nationally. Here’s why: It’s a headache. You can individually verify that the school locations are accurate and each record in the database is in fact a school when you’re looking at hundreds of sites in a city. You can’t do it one by one when you’re working with a dataset of just over 100,000 entries.&nbsp;</p>
<p>If a school’s coordinates are off by even a few dozen yards, it could appear to be within 500 feet of a road that it actually isn’t, or farther away than it actually is. The location for each school is the equivalent of the pinpoint on a Google map, rather than the boundaries encompassing the entire property, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room.</p>
<p>The NCES dataset also includes entries that wouldn’t make sense for us to count in a story about K-12 schools educating kids close to traffic: online-only, adult ed, a host of programs that we’re not certain why school districts recorded as schools.</p>
<p>Reveal’s <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/author/eric-sagara/">Eric Sagara</a> and the Center’s <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkins">Jamie Smith Hopkins</a> and <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/chris-zubak-skees">Chris Zubak-Skees</a> spent several months verifying the data. Here’s what we did to improve its accuracy:</p>
<p>●&nbsp;We checked a random sample of schools showing up within 500 feet of busy roads and a random sample of schools geocoded a bit farther away, to see whether geocoding issues would lead to over- or undercounting of higher-traffic schools. (Justin Scoggins, a data-verification expert who is data manager at the University of Southern California’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, recommended this step.) What this suggested: More than 90 percent of schools that are supposedly within 500 feet of busy roads really are. Meanwhile, schools that are <em>closer</em> to those roads than they appear — that is, they seem to be more than 500 feet away but are actually less than 500 feet — outnumber the schools that are <em>farther</em> than they appear. That gave us confidence that we’re not overstating the problem.</p>
<p>●&nbsp;All told, we eyeballed the locations of hundreds of schools, which allowed us to make fixes where necessary and gave us an understanding of the issues on the ground. When adjusting a school’s coordinates, we put them on a building rather than, say, the playground, to be consistent with what NCES tries to do.</p>
<p>● Sometimes NCES is better at locating a school, and sometimes Google is. By comparing locations with the <a href="http://www.californiaschoolcampusdatabase.org/">California School Campus Database</a>, which provides mostly-accurate school boundaries in that state, we found that using Google’s geocoding service to locate a school’s address, and then using Google’s coordinates when those were available with so-called rooftop accuracy, improved the location accuracy for many schools. That's what we ultimately did for the entire country. (The Center’s Zubak-Skees, who worked through this issue, also conducted the geospatial analysis of schools and roads in the first place to determine what’s close to what.)</p>
<p>●&nbsp;We set to work figuring out which schools (and non-schools masquerading as schools) should not be counted. Online-only schools are supposed to flag themselves as such, but some don’t, so we ultimately excluded schools with “online,” “virtual” and “distance” in their names in addition to those that properly identified themselves as not teaching kids on site. Also kicked out: pre-K-only sites, adult-education sites, schools flagged as “future” or “closed” or “inactive,” locations with “program” in their names (other than a handful that our verification efforts showed really were schools), homeschool-support sites and homebound programs for ill students. We also didn’t count schools with fewer than 20 total students — smaller than the average size of a single classroom — as a way of further weeding out sites that really aren’t schools at all.</p>
<p>● It’s not unusual for districts to build several schools on the same property, but we were concerned that some of those clusters might not accurately reflect where the schools are located. We checked larger clusters across the country to verify whether the schools are there, as well as whether the coordinates reflect where on the property they sit. We cast a particularly close eye on clusters whose addresses matched their district headquarters address.</p>
<p>We didn’t exclude schools for not fully filling out their demographic data — giving the number of students in certain racial categories (say, white and black) but not the number of students in others (say, Pacific Islander). NCES staffers told us that it should be safe to consider these missing data points as “zero.” They don’t have a reason to believe there’s something fundamentally wrong with the numbers reported for those schools that would require invalidating them.</p>
<p>Our checks eliminated a little over 10,000 schools from our tally, bringing the total to roughly 90,000. And you know what? After all our efforts, the trends we found were the same ones that popped up with the raw data. Comforting <em>and</em> annoying.</p>
<p>Reveal’s Sagara then conducted a <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/11/a-refresher-on-regression-analysis">regression analysis</a> to get a better understanding of what makes a school more likely to be near a busy road. Bottom line: Being in a big city. That might seem obvious, but there are plenty of schools near substantial traffic that aren’t in big cities, so this analysis was important for zeroing in on the key reason that predominantly minority schools are near these roads at a markedly higher rate than predominately white schools. (Why people live where they do, and how much traffic they’re exposed to, continues to be influenced by decades-old decisions about which neighborhoods to lend in and which to cut through when building major routes, as <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/02/17/20716/invisible-hazard-afflicting-thousands-schools">our story</a> describes.)</p>
<p>If you’re wondering whether your child’s school falls within 500 feet of a busy road, <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/02/17/20723/your-school-near-busy-road-and-its-air-pollution">check out our interactive data tool</a>.&nbsp;You can enter any address, school or not, and see if it’s by a road that meets our traffic threshold.</p>
Trucks rumble&nbsp;along the road outside&nbsp;Hawkins Street School in Newark, New Jersey, as a family waits to cross.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsQuestions and answers about schools and traffic pollutionhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20721Thousands of schools are close to busy roads, but they can improve the air their students breathe. Here&#039;s what some have done.The Voice: Frank Sinatra, the Columbia Years2017-02-17T05:01:43-05:002017-02-17T04:59:00-05:00<p><strong>How close is too close, and how much traffic is too much traffic?</strong></p>
<p>Traffic pollutants travel, but they’re higher on and close to roads. In general, studies suggest that the biggest daytime exposures are within 500 feet of the road, though some studies have found elevated levels farther out, such as roughly <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1309104215301999">900 to 1,000 feet</a>. California’s <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=200320040SB352">school-siting law</a>, which aims to keep new schools away from freeways and other major routes, uses 500 feet as the area of concern.</p>
<p>California’s law focuses on very heavily traveled roads, but there’s no true dividing line between bad and OK. Some studies have <a href="https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2015/713540/">found health effects</a> among <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26298587">people near roads</a> with at least 10,000 vehicles a day, which includes routes with a tiny fraction of the traffic on an L.A. freeway. In fact, because steady speeds produce less pollution than acceleration, vehicles on highways that aren’t plagued by stop-by-go congestion are cleaner than they are on lower-speed roads with traffic lights and stop signs. And a road that draws diesel trucks, particularly old ones, could be worse than a higher-traffic route with only cars.</p>
<p>“As people are looking more and more at traffic pollution, they’re finding effects with less vehicles and they’re finding effects farther away as well,” said Barbara Weller, a toxicology expert who works at California’s <a href="https://www.arb.ca.gov/homepage.htm">Air Resources Board</a> as supervisor for the population studies section of the health and exposure assessment branch.</p>
<p>To try to account for some of these complexities, the Center for Public Integrity and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.revealnews.org/">Reveal</a>&nbsp;from The Center for Investigative Reporting focused on roads with average traffic of at least <a href="https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-6-23">30,000 vehicles</a> a day, as well as roads with at least 500 trucks and 10,000 total vehicles a day.</p>
<p><strong>What are the health implications of putting a school near a busy road?</strong></p>
<p>“The closer anybody is to a major road – school, home, business, whatever – the more they’re going to be exposed to air pollution from vehicles that are traveling on that road,” said <a href="http://publichealth.gwu.edu/departments/environmental-and-occupational-health/jerome-paulson">Dr. Jerome Paulson</a>, professor emeritus in pediatrics and environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University.</p>
<p>It's not just about the time spent outdoors.</p>
<p>“There’s sort of this myth that when we close our windows and shut our doors, we’re completely protected, but that is not true,” said <a href="https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/people/our-faculty/fpp1">Frederica Perera</a>, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University. “Fine particles, ultrafine particles and gases, vapors, are able to come into the indoor environment. They penetrate very readily.”</p>
<p>That matters, because traffic pollution can <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11034-traffic-exposure-disrupts-teen-lung-development/">stunt lung growth</a> in children. The difference isn’t enough for immediate symptoms — though traffic exposure can also cause <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22211400">wheezing</a> and worsen <a href="https://www.arb.ca.gov/research/asthma/asthma.htm">asthma symptoms</a>, not everyone will feel those effects — but lung size could have implications later in life. Adults lose a bit of their lung function each year. Researchers worry that starting adulthood with smaller lungs could increase the odds of future health problems.</p>
<p>Newer research has also linked traffic pollution to the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/traffic-pollution-and-asthma/">development</a> (not just the worsening) of asthma, <a href="http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.201006-0937OC">chronic obstructive pulmonary disease</a>, <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001792">cognitive</a> and <a href="http://www.econweb.umd.edu/~ham/test%20scores%20submit.pdf">learning problems</a>,<a href="http://oehha.ca.gov/air/press-release/press-release-air/study-finds-long-term-exposure-ultrafine-particle-air-pollution"> heart disease</a> and <a href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1408322/">dementia</a>. Some research has also linked traffic pollution to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-airpollution-kids-leukemia-idUSKCN0S02Q520151006">cancer</a>; <a href="https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf">diesel exhaust</a> from older trucks and certain <a href="http://www.who.int/ipcs/features/benzene.pdf">chemicals</a> emitted by gasoline-powered vehicles are known carcinogens. So the health concerns aren’t limited to children.</p>
<p>In Detroit, where the asthma hospitalization rate for kids is nearly <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdhhs/Detroit-AsthmaBurden_516668_7.pdf">three times</a> the statewide rate, the head of the city’s health department is concerned about the long-term effects of traffic proximity.</p>
<p>“We built highways well into the heart of Detroit,” said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, executive director of the Detroit Health Department. The city has lots of schools near significant traffic, and “we’re only now starting to appreciate that maybe these aren’t the best places to put our kids,” he said.</p>
<p><strong>What factors affect exposure near roads?</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3304588/">Wind direction</a>, for one. If the wind tends to blow from the road to your nearby location, you’ll get more exposure overall than someone on the other side of the pavement.</p>
<p>Elevated highways tend to be worse for people near them. Cut-section highways — roads lower than the land around them — are somewhat better. <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.3359&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf">Sound barriers</a> can help reduce exposure for people very close to the highway, though they might increase it for people a bit farther away (and can definitely do so for the drivers on the road, because more of it sticks around). An EPA paper you can download <a href="https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?dirEntryId=203764&amp;fed_org_id=770&amp;SIType=PR&amp;TIMSType=&amp;showCriteria=0&amp;address=nerl&amp;view=citation&amp;sortBy=pubDateYear&amp;count=100&amp;dateEndPublishedPresented=12/31/2009">here</a> sums up some of these issues.</p>
<p>The EPA <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/ochp_2015_near_road_pollution_booklet_v16_508.pdf">thinks</a> vegetation can help trap pollution as well, so a school separated from a road by a thick buffer of trees is likely better off — but this <a href="https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2013/nrs_2013_nowak_002.pdf">research</a> is still developing. And location could matter. Some scientists have <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23194646">found</a> that trees don’t help in urban areas because their ability to remove pollutants isn’t as strong as their ability to <a href="https://theconversation.com/greener-but-not-cleaner-how-trees-can-worsen-urban-air-pollution-44856">block airflow</a>, keeping pollutants from escaping and getting diluted.</p>
<p><strong>So what can schools near roads do about their air quality?</strong></p>
<p>Closing a school’s doors and windows won’t keep traffic pollutants out (though that helps). Heavy-duty air filters — higher quality than the typical filters in schools — can substantially reduce what gets into the air the kids and teachers are breathing inside.</p>
<p>Filters rated MERV 16, characterized as surgery-grade, have been installed in dozens of Southern California schools. In the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, more than 40 schools have high-grade filters to improve air in areas near highways, ports and other pollution sources.</p>
<p>Measurements by the <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/">South Coast Air Quality Management District</a> — a local air-pollution control agency — <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/ceqa/handbook/aqmdpilotstudyfinalreport.pdf?sfvrsn=0">found</a> that MERV 16 filters in schools catch approximately 90 percent of fine and ultrafine particles, pollutants that are a key part of what makes traffic pollution a health risk. A much lower 20 to 50 percent of the particles were caught by the measured schools’ earlier efforts, which at best had involved air filters with a rating of MERV 7.</p>
<p>MERV 16 filters aren’t high price. You can buy them for less than $100 apiece. Schools with central air conditioning and heating — an HVAC system — should be able to use them, but it might take some retrofitting. IQAir, a company that’s installed high-grade filtration in hundreds of schools, most in California, says schools with a central system usually don’t need to spend much on alterations.</p>
<p>The big cost is for schools without HVAC. They’re left with two expensive options: pony up for HVAC, or pay for stand-alone air purification systems that are much pricier than air filters.</p>
<p>The South Coast air district offered a rough estimate of around $2,500 per classroom to install high-quality filters — averaging between schools that don’t need to do much and those staring down big-ticket HVAC costs.</p>
<p>At El Marino Language School in Culver City, California, officials retrofitted the heating system to get the filters in — that work cost about $500,000 — and plan to spend an additional $2 million installing&nbsp;air conditioning this summer so teachers can keep the doors and windows closed, allowing the filters to do their work.</p>
<p><strong>How have schools paid for indoor-air fixes?</strong></p>
<p>Dozens of schools in Southern California have received high-grade air filters paid for by the South Coast air district, which has funded the work with a pool of money that includes penalties assessed on polluting companies.</p>
<p>Not all schools near major roads in that region qualify, though. So the freeway-adjacent El Marino Language School got funding after the Culver City Unified School District in California proposed an ultimately successful bond measure, some of which was earmarked for work there. The lack of air conditioning at El Marino meant a higher price tag for effective filtration. The school could (and ultimately did) install filters by retrofitting the heating system, but it really needed to add AC, too, so unfiltered air wouldn’t flow in through doors open directly to the outdoors.</p>
<p>In Utah, meanwhile, the state Department of Transportation is paying for higher-quality air filters at five schools within about 1,600 feet of a highway under construction. That’s part of a <a href="http://docplayer.net/23616536-Near-road-air-quality-and-mitigation-in-schools-near-the-mountain-view-corridor-presentation-to-the-granite-school-district-board-on-february-3-2015.html">deal</a> struck after parents, environmentalists and doctors <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695254678/Granite-district-opposes-Mountain-View-Corridor-route.html">mobilized</a> during the planning stages nearly a decade ago, modeled after a settlement over a highway-widening project in Las Vegas. Funding allotted for the Utah school upgrades and 30 years of future maintenance: $1.1 million, the equivalent of about $7,300 per school per year.</p>
<p><strong>My school has air filters. That’s good enough, right?</strong></p>
<p>School filtration and ventilation is often subpar, according to researchers who have documented conditions in the West and Midwest. Years ago, when he was at the California Air Resources Board, Thomas J. Phillips was part of a study of school classrooms and found air filters that “hadn’t been changed in quite a while — maybe the life of the school.”</p>
<p>Phillips, now principal scientist at Healthy Building Research in California, points out that school budgets are usually crunched.</p>
<p>“Things like air sealing and better air filtration will help,” he said. “But the devil’s in the details. How do you make sure it’s done right? How do you fund it? How do you maintain it?”</p>
<p>Being vigilant about maintenance is a good start. But the EPA also <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/ochp_2015_near_road_pollution_booklet_v16_508.pdf">recommends</a> that schools with traffic-pollution challenges install the highest-grade air filters they can. (For more details on that, see the answer above to “So what can schools near roads do about their air quality?”)</p>
<p><strong>What can I do if my district is building a school near a highway or other significant road?</strong></p>
<p>You could start a conversation if it’s not a done deal: Does your school district realize the health implications of nearby traffic? (Many don’t.) Are there other viable sites farther from busy roads?</p>
<p>Traffic isn’t the only environmental-health hazard, and the EPA <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/ochp_2015_near_road_pollution_booklet_v16_508.pdf">cautions</a> that building schools in far-off locations to avoid traffic just forces kids and staff to spend more time on roads to get there, breathing those pollutants while sitting in buses and cars. If a school must be built near significant traffic, experts recommend designing the site to improve air quality.</p>
<p>An effective HVAC system with high-grade air filters will substantially reduce the traffic particles getting to the classrooms, as schools in freeway-heavy Southern California have found. It’s also a good idea to put outdoor-activity areas, such as playgrounds and athletic fields, farther from the road while earmarking the closest spots for uses such as parking and storage, the EPA says. Other measures, such as placing the air intake away from the fumes of the road and the school loading dock, can also help.</p>
<p><strong>The state plans to build a big road near my child’s school. Now what?</strong></p>
<p>That’s happening in Utah. After parents, environmentalists and doctors joined forces to object, the state Department of Transportation agreed to pay for air monitoring and higher-quality air filters at five schools near the incoming <a href="http://www.udot.utah.gov/mountainview/">Mountain View Corridor</a> highway project.</p>
<p>“We’ve come a long way just to understand there is a problem out there,” said Linda Hansen, a member of the Utah State Board of Education and a former PTA leader in the affected school district. “We’re hoping once we get the data … from this project, we’ll be able to use it in other projects and get districts to see they really need to put some mitigation into those schools they have near roadways, because it’s hard on kids.”</p>
<p>This is why she thinks the advocacy effort paid off: “Groups that usually don’t work together on issues all came together.”</p>
<p>Reed Soper, environmental manager on the Mountain View Corridor project for a Department of Transportation contractor, sees the outcome as a win, too. “Everyone was willing to roll up their sleeves and come up with a solution that didn’t involve a lawsuit,” he said.</p>
<p><strong>A big increase in truck traffic is coming near my child’s school. What can I do?</strong></p>
<p>If it’s temporary, see if the traffic can be timed to avoid school days. Residents in Mars, Pennsylvania, convinced an energy company to wait until summer to hydraulically fracture gas wells there so schools wouldn’t be in session during the ensuing spike in truck volumes on the road passing by them, said Patrice Tomcik, the western Pennsylvania field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force. State environmental protection officials acted as mediators between residents and the company.</p>
<p>“I just want other communities to realize they have options,” she said.</p>
<p>If it’s not temporary, talk to transportation officials. Could other roads handle the traffic instead? What would be the implications of rerouting it? Or talk to the company behind the increase, if there’s a single employer involved.</p>
<p>In Chicago, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization has pressed a manufacturer to use newer, less-polluting trucks as it prepares for hundreds more trips a day on a site next to an elementary school. The group's leaders say they're encouraged by the ongoing conversation.</p>
<p>“That’s not to say we don’t want the jobs, or that this growth isn’t important. It is,” said Kim Wasserman, executive director of the group. “But not at the cost of the truck drivers” — who breathe air <a href="http://trrjournalonline.trb.org/doi/abs/10.3141/1987-09?journalCode=trr">tainted with their exhaust</a> — “or the communities where these trucks are going.”</p>
<p><strong>My kid’s school isn’t near any major roads, but what about the diesel school buses that idle outside? Isn’t that a problem?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. Getting bus drivers (and parents) to turn off their engines while waiting to pick up kids really can make a difference. <a href="https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/bio/r/patrick-ryan">Pat Ryan</a>, an associate professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, led a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24061789">study</a> that found significant drops in air pollutants following an anti-idling campaign at a Cincinnati school with a lot of buses.</p>
<p>Just putting up a no-idling sign isn’t enough, Ryan said: “You have to be a little more active, at least until — hopefully — it becomes a habit.” There’s an assumption among some drivers that they’ll burn up more fuel turning their engine off and back on again than if they idle, but that’s not true, he said.</p>
<p>The EPA has also helped school districts replace old diesel buses with grants&nbsp;from its <a href="https://www.epa.gov/cleandiesel/learn-about-clean-diesel">Diesel Emissions Reduction Act</a> program. But the future of that funding is unclear.</p>
<p><strong>I’m not in a big city. This stuff doesn’t apply to my area, right?</strong></p>
<p>Schools near busy roads are a particular problem in big cities, but thousands of these cases are in suburbs, smaller cities and rural communities.</p>
<p>School districts in areas with more undeveloped land do have options a heavily urbanized district doesn’t, as long as the issue is on their radar. Consider the suburban Blue Valley district in Overland Park, Kansas. Officials there try to get new schools into the plans for future subdivisions while there’s still time for that — and to build their&nbsp;campuses as far from major roads as they&nbsp;can.</p>
<p>“Safety is one [reason], but the impact of pollutants on those major roads is another one,” said Dave Hill, executive director of facilities and operations for Blue Valley, which helps mentor other school districts on indoor-air quality.</p>
<p><strong>How many vehicles are on the road near my child’s school? How can I find out exactly what’s in the air there?</strong></p>
<p>To see if a school falls within 500 feet of a busy road, check out our interactive data tool above. You can enter any address, school or not, and see if it’s by a road that meets our traffic threshold.</p>
<p>Determining what’s in the air isn’t so easy. The odds are low that a government air-pollution monitor is located in your exact area of interest. But that’s not your only option these days.</p>
<p>“There are a lot of emerging technologies — low-cost sensors — out there that communities can use themselves to measure some air pollutants,” said <a href="http://sph.umd.edu/people/sacoby-wilson">Sacoby Wilson</a>, an assistant professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland.</p>
<p>That’s particularly true of fine particles (particulate matter that’s 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, or <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics#PM">PM2.5</a> — far, far smaller than a grain of sand). The South Coast air district reviews those sensors <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/summary">here</a> and <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/field">here</a>. Such sensors <a href="https://blog.epa.gov/blog/2016/04/low-cost-air-sensors-the-risks-and-the-rewards/">aren’t as accurate</a> as high-cost government equipment yet, so use with caution, but you can get an idea of how the pollutants range in different locations and at different times of day. The <a href="https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox">EPA has a guide</a> for how to do this type of “citizen science” air monitoring.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, sensors priced at a couple hundred dollars won’t help you track some key road pollutants, such as <a href="http://www.unep.org/tnt-unep/toolkit/pollutants/facts.html">ultrafine particles</a> — the even smaller specks that spike near roads — and diesel-emitted black carbon. That type of equipment is much more expensive, though it is possible to rent a black-carbon monitor rather than shell out thousands of dollars to buy it.</p>
<p>One strategy: Ask for help. A parent at the El Marino Language School in California borrowed air-monitoring equipment from a university to measure ultrafine particles at the near-highway site. She documented that ocean breezes weren’t ameliorating the problem, as some had hoped, and parents convinced the school district to install air filtration.</p>
<p>You could also encourage your community to conduct more air monitoring. The <a href="https://arrayofthings.github.io/">Array of Things</a> project is installing all sorts of sensors, some measuring air pollution, across Chicago.</p>
<p><strong>Does it make sense to pay for better air filters in thousands of schools, let alone other buildings near big roads? Isn’t it more efficient to just do something about the pollution?</strong></p>
<p>High-grade air filters are a stop-gap measure. No-emission roads are likely a long ways off, and kids — as well as adults — have to keep breathing in the meantime.</p>
<p>But plenty of public-health advocates think that less traffic pollution should be the priority, because that would help air quality overall.</p>
<p>The good news: The trend’s heading in the right direction. New vehicles are much cleaner than old ones. The bad news: Diesel engines last a long time, so there are still a lot of old trucks in use. Besides California, no states have requirements to phase out old truck engines over time.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100OHMK.pdf">Diesel Emissions Reduction Act</a> has helped replace or retrofit tens of thousands of old diesel engines to speed up slow turnover, but this could be the last year of that funding. (The program technically lapsed already but received some money this year because the continuing-resolution budget measure extended prior-year levels of funding through April.)</p>
<p><strong>Where can I go for more information?</strong></p>
<p>The EPA put out a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/ochp_2015_near_road_pollution_booklet_v16_508.pdf">guide in 2015</a> to help schools deal with traffic pollution. It also has a broader <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/school_siting_guidelines-2.pdf">2011 guide</a> about schools and environmental health, including traffic-pollution issues.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.healthyschools.org/">Healthy Schools Network</a> focuses on environmental health in schools. <a href="http://www.healthyschools.org/HealthySchools2015.pdf">Here’s the group’s Towards Healthy Schools 2015 report</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://rocis.org/">Reducing Outdoor Contaminants in Indoor Spaces</a> site has resources about indoor-air quality.</p>
<p>The South Coast air district has studied <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/ceqa/handbook/aqmdpilotstudyfinalreport.pdf?sfvrsn=0">better air filtration in schools</a> as well as the effectiveness of <a href="http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/summary">low-cost air pollution sensors</a>.</p>
<p>And don’t forget our <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/02/17/20723/your-school-near-busy-road-and-its-air-pollution">interactive data tool</a>, which lets you type in an address and see if it falls within 500 feet of a busy road.</p>
<p><em>Hopkins reported this story with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/event/2016-national-health-journalism-fellowship" target="_blank"><em>National Fellowship</em></a><em>, programs of the University of Southern California&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/" target="_blank"><em>Center for Health Journalism</em></a><em>.</em></p>
Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland —&nbsp;hemmed in by three roads, including Washington's Beltway — is one of thousands of public schools near significant traffic.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsIs your school near a busy road and its air pollution?http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20723Traffic pollution spikes close to roads, a health risk for people with frequent exposure.Air pollution;Air pollution in Macau;Muromachi Street2017-02-17T05:01:43-05:002017-02-17T04:59:00-05:00<p>Traffic pollution spikes close to roads, <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/02/17/20716/invisible-hazard-afflicting-thousands-schools">a health hazard</a> for nearby school students and anyone&nbsp;who spends time in those areas. Exposure increases the risk of problems, ranging from asthma attacks to heart disease. To find out if your school or another location of interest falls within 500 feet of a busy route (marked in red and orange), search below.</p>
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Chris Zubak-Skeeshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/chris-zubak-skeesJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsEPA wants to restrict sometimes-deadly paint stripper chemicalhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20589The U.S. EPA wants to largely ban the use of a chemical in paint strippers that has swiftly killed dozens of people.Paint stripper;Woodworking;Solvent;Personal life;Toxic Substances Control Act;Chemistry;Manufacturing;Paint;Bathtub refinishing;Stripper2018-03-26T09:53:27-04:002017-01-12T17:31:35-05:00<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to largely ban the use of a chemical in paint strippers that has killed dozens of people, asphyxiating some and triggering heart attacks in others.</p>
<p>The agency announced the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/federal-register-notice-methylene-chloride-and-n">proposed rule today</a>, a move that followed pleas from public-health officials to do something about methylene chloride, the chemical in many of the paint removers on home improvement store shelves. Until last year, the cans didn’t include warnings about the risk of death from use in enclosed spaces, which is where people have typically died amid its fumes — in <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6107a2.htm">bathrooms</a>, basements, tanks and even a squash court.</p>
<p>A 2015 Center for Public Integrity <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/21/17991/common-solvent-keeps-killing-workers-consumers">investigation</a> uncovered more than 50 accidental exposure deaths linked to the chemical since 1980 in the U.S. — a likely undercount, given its ability to bring on a heart attack — and showed that federal agencies had opportunities to act decades ago but did not. Deaths blamed on methylene chloride have been documented since at least the 1940s, and in 1976 two academics wrote a <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~dshuster/MeCl/MeCl%20Tox%20Refs/Stewart_1976.pdf">piece</a> in which they detailed a consumer death and criticized the lack of federal action.</p>
<p>The EPA said it determined that methylene chloride in paint strippers poses “unreasonable risks” to workers and consumers, not only because it can kill rapidly as its fumes build up but also because it increases the odds of developing cancer and can harm organs such as the lungs and kidneys. The only exceptions the agency proposed to its prohibition are for certain national security uses, which it wants to exempt for 10 years, and for furniture stripping, because the agency said it needs more time to determine how best to regulate the use of the chemical in that industry.</p>
<p>The EPA would require paint strippers with methylene chloride be distributed in 55-gallon drums to make sure they don’t end up on shelves in cans that consumers and businesses might unwittingly buy. About 1.3 million consumers use these products every year, in addition to roughly 30,000 people at work, the agency estimates.</p>
<p>“There are many cases of people who have become ill or even died as a result of exposure to methylene chloride-containing paint removers,” the EPA said in its announcement of the proposal. “Today’s action, when finalized, will save lives and protect people from other serious health risks.”</p>
<p>The proposal — opposed by businesses that make and use the solvent — comes eight years after the European Union <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?language=en&amp;type=IM-PRESS&amp;reference=20090113IPR46095">approved</a> a <a href="https://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/0ea58491-bb76-4a47-b1d2-36faa1e0f290">ban on sales</a> of methylene chloride paint strippers to consumers and companies, with the exception of businesses using it in industrial sites with protective equipment and other cautionary measures. The chemical is also known as dichloromethane.</p>
<p>The would-be rule is the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/federal-register-notice-trichloroethylene-tce-0">third</a> the EPA has <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-moves-ban-certain-aerosol-degreasers-and-dry-cleaning-spot-removers-first-major">proposed</a> since December that would restrict chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act, reformed last year by Congress to give EPA the power to more effectively protect Americans from dangerous exposures at work and at home.</p>
<p>“For the first time in a generation, we are able to restrict chemicals already in commerce that pose risks to public health and the environment,” Jim Jones, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement last month.</p>
<p>But for the proposals to become rules, they will need the support of the incoming, regulation-adverse Trump administration. The president-elect has said that for every new rule his agencies enact, he wants to <a href="https://www.bna.com/trumps-onein-twoout-n73014447670/">eliminate two</a>. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, tapped as a Trump adviser, said his role will be “rallying against this overregulation that we have.”</p>
<p>Trade groups and businesses, meanwhile, tried to kill the paint-stripper proposal before it could be unveiled for public comment. Meeting with the White House regulatory-review arm that is the gatekeeper for rules, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance argued in December that the EPA action overstates the risks — though the group agrees that the chemical can be deadly in enclosed areas — and would leave people without a good paint-stripping alternative, according to the group’s <a href="https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/viewEO12866Meeting?viewRule=true&amp;rin=2070-AK07&amp;meetingId=2159&amp;acronym=2070-EPA/OCSPP">presentation</a>. As the EPA was working to finish its proposal last year, the trade group <a href="https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/Petition%20HP%2016-1%20Labeling%20of%20Household%20Products%20Containing%20Methylene%20Chloride%20-%20July%207,%202016.pdf">petitioned</a> the Consumer Product Safety Commission to require stronger warnings on cans, then told the White House’s Office of Management and Budget that the EPA shouldn’t be “usurping” the CPSC’s authority.</p>
<p>W.M. Barr &amp; Co., an employee-owned company that makes several methylene chloride paint stripper brands, including ones linked to worker deaths in recent years, said in its <a href="https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/viewEO12866Meeting?viewRule=true&amp;rin=2070-AK07&amp;meetingId=2160&amp;acronym=2070-EPA/OCSPP">presentation</a> to the Office of Management and Budget that the solvent “offers a truly unique set of benefits and can be safely used as millions of uses each year shows.” In an earlier interview with the Center, the company’s vice president of risk management pointed out that methylene chloride — unlike alternative chemicals for stripping — is nonflammable.</p>
<p>But the solvent is often paired with other, flammable chemicals in paint strippers, the EPA noted in its proposal. And chemical-safety advocates contend that there are safer, effective alternatives. Benzyl alcohol, which some state agencies <a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Documents/MethyleneChlorideAlert.pdf">have</a> <a href="http://www.lni.wa.gov/Safety/Research/Files/MCHazAlertBenzylAlcoholAlternative.pdf">recommended</a>, is less toxic and poses what the National Fire Protection Association describes as a “fairly insignificant” fire hazard. The Institute for Research and Technical Assistance, which tests safer substitutes for popular solvents, said it found benzyl alcohol to be a reasonably good replacement for furniture stripping — an industry exempted in the proposed rule — because it loosens the same coatings for roughly the same cost overall.</p>
<p>The EPA <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/prepublicationcopy_paintremovers_nprm_2017-01-12assigned.pdf">said</a> methylene chloride does cause unreasonable risks in furniture stripping and wrote in its proposal that it intends to propose regulation for that use later, “after seeking additional information to further characterize the impacts of potential regulatory action.” It wants to enact both rules at the same time.</p>
<p>Furniture strippers who died from exposure to the chemical include 18-year-old Johnathan Welch. In 1999, the week before he would have started college, he was stripping paint over a tank in a business near Chattanooga, Tennessee,&nbsp;when co-workers left the room to eat lunch. When they returned 35 minutes later, he was collapsed over the tank, a burned, swelling arm in the liquid. Doctors tried in vain to revive him.</p>
<p>His mother, Rita Welch, said neither she nor her son had any idea the job he started at age 16 — after school at first, then full time — was putting him in contact with something that could kill him. “In his second year, he started having some dizzy spells and having problems with his sinuses, but I didn’t link it to the chemicals,” she said in 2015 interview, choked up with regrets over the still-keen loss.</p>
<p>The deaths in recent years have typically involved <a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&amp;p_id=29475">bathtub refinishing</a>, with workers leaning over tubs to remove the finish, not realizing that that the fumes were building up to dangerous levels. The solvents industry agrees that methylene chloride is unsafe for bathtub work but wants warnings on labels rather than a ban.</p>
<p>Because methylene chloride is an anesthetic, it can knock victims out and shut down their ability to breathe. Gary de la Peña, who survived a near-death experience with the chemical at a California paint company five years ago, was overcome seconds after he rushed into a nine-foot-deep tank to rescue a collapsed co-worker who’d been using paint stripper inside it. His co-worker died. De la Peña was hospitalized for four days and told the Center in 2015 that his health had never been the same.</p>
<p>Methylene chloride transforms in the body to carbon monoxide, giving it another way to kill — by triggering a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2427257-heart-attack-death.html#document/p1/a242210">heart attack</a> from lack of oxygen. And while methylene chloride isn’t flammable, an open flame can convert it to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1038054/">phosgene</a>, the poisonous gas that killed tens of thousands in World War I.</p>
<p>Some paint-stripping alternatives carry their own health risks. Studies have linked N-methylpyrrolidone, or NMP, to miscarriages and other effects on unborn children, and EPA’s paint-stripper proposal covers that chemical as well. But the agency offered two possibilities it asked for comment on: Whether to ban NMP outright in paint strippers, with a temporary exemption for national-security uses, or to require more dilution of the chemical in paint strippers along with better warnings on labels and more worker protections.</p>
Removing paint using a paint stripper.&nbsp;
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsMaryland’s plea to EPA: Make out-of-state power plants run pollution controlshttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20475Maryland officials say out-of-state power plants aren&#039;t using their smog controls properly, and they&#039;ve asked the EPA to step in.Environment;United States Environmental Protection Agency;Pollution;United States;Environment of the United States;Natural environment;Center for Climate and Energy Solutions2016-11-18T12:13:57-05:002016-11-18T12:13:57-05:00<p>Some power plants with smog controls aren’t using them effectively — or at all — and are fouling the air hundreds of miles away as a result.</p>
<p>That’s the conclusion reached by the Maryland Department of the Environment, which <a href="http://news.maryland.gov/mde/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/11/MD_126_Petition_Final_111616.pdf">petitioned</a> the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week to make 19 coal-fired plants run their control equipment throughout the summer, when ground-level ozone — often known as smog — is most likely to form.</p>
<p>Ten of those 19 plants were identified by the Center for Public Integrity in September as “<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/09/29/20248/america-s-super-polluters">super polluters</a>” because they were among the top 100 U.S. industrial sites for toxic substances pumped into the air, greenhouse gases released, or both, in 2014.</p>
<p>Maryland’s petition focused on releases of nitrogen oxides, a key ozone ingredient. Ben Grumbles, Maryland’s secretary of the environment, said he simply wants the 19 plants to do what his state’s coal plants must: “Run the controls — run the controls every day of the ozone season, and downwind states will benefit significantly from that.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/03/12/16857/rural-utah-dallas-and-la-smog-besets-communities-across-us">Ozone is bad for the lungs</a>, can trigger asthma attacks and, researchers suspect, can harm the heart as well. And the pollutants that turn into it when baked in the sun can travel far afield.</p>
<p>Maryland contends that roughly 70 percent of its ozone problem can be linked to emissions from upwind states. Its petition names power plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, including three in the southwest Indiana region that the Center featured because of its concentration of big air polluters.</p>
<p>Maryland says in its petition that the power plants’ inefficient use of their controls put roughly 39,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air in the summer of 2015 that otherwise would have been captured. That’s because federal rules capping those emissions are based on averages over the entire summer, rather than on a daily basis.</p>
<p>As coal plants run less frequently due to competition from natural gas and renewables, they no longer have to use their controls consistently to meet the federal caps. That saves the plants money. But it contributes to ozone, which forms as a result of conditions on a given day — not based on summer-wide averages. It’s also created tensions between states, some of which have acted to require smog controls be run, and some of which have not.</p>
<p>The EPA said it is reviewing the petition.</p>
<p>Indiana Department of Environmental Management spokeswoman Courtney Arango called the request “deficient” because Maryland air wasn't&nbsp;violating ozone requirements as of 2015, the most recent publicly available ozone data from the EPA. Maryland says exceedances in&nbsp;2016 pushed it over the limit, and an&nbsp;even tighter standard kicks in next year.</p>
<p>Arango said the EPA recently updated nitrogen oxides caps for Indiana in a September rule intended to reduce ozone ingredients pumped out by power plants.</p>
<p>“Indiana and its utilities are complying with the rule and have no plans to challenge it,” she said in an email.</p>
<p>Maryland officials said the new rule still allows power plants to average their emissions over time, and therefore won't address their concerns.</p>
<p>Maryland’s effort follows a regional <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/94770.html">petition</a> in 2013 to make Indiana and eight other states do more to control ozone. The EPA has yet to act on that petition as required; New York and four other states <a href="http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-state-coalition-sue-epa-force-decision-controlling-smog-pollution">sued</a> in October to force a decision.</p>
<p>Indiana uses coal to make three-quarters of its electricity, and Gov. Mike Pence — the vice president-elect — has <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/09/29/20248/america-s-super-polluters">fought</a> federal efforts to cut down on power-plant pollution. Pence casts it as an economic issue, saying coal employs Hoosiers and makes the lower-cost electricity the state’s manufacturers rely on.</p>
<p>Health and environmental advocates are pushing back, contending that coal is no longer the cheapest option, even without considering the costs to health and the climate. This week, a trade group promoting energy efficiency and other “advanced energy” industries <a href="https://www.aee.net/articles/report-indiana-advanced-energy-jobs">said the sector</a> — coal’s competition — employs nearly 48,000 in Indiana. That’s seven times the number of people directly employed by coal mining there, according to federal figures.</p>
<p>“The common misunderstanding is that clean-energy jobs don’t matter, they’re not very significant. And they really are,” said Advanced Energy Economy CEO Graham Richard, a former Indiana mayor and state senator. “These transitions are wrenching for a community, and we certainly understand a coal-country job being lost is a travesty for that family. But we’ve got to find ways of transitioning to a new kind of economic opportunity in those areas, and we don’t help ourselves by promising to retain that which the economic forces are going to wash over anyway.”</p>
The Maryland Department of the Environment is asking&nbsp;the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make 19 coal-fired plants — including three in southwest Indiana — consistently&nbsp;run their smog-control equipment.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsAmerica’s super pollutershttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/20248Industrial air pollution is strikingly concentrated among a small number of sites, a Center analysis found.Environment;Coal mining;Coal;Clean Air Act;Economic geology;Fuels;Fossil-fuel power station;Climate change in the United States;Energy;American Electric Power;Environment of the United States;Natural environment2016-09-29T07:23:58-04:002016-09-29T00:01:00-04:00<p><em>This story was produced in collaboration with The Weather Channel and USA TODAY.</em></p>
<p>EVANSVILLE, Indiana—To see one of the country’s largest coal-fired power plants, head northwest from this Ohio River city. Or east, because there’s another in the region. In fact, nearly every direction you go will take you to a coal plant — seven within 30 miles.</p>
<p>Collectively they pump out millions of pounds of toxic air pollution. They throw off greenhouse gases on par with Hong Kong or Sweden.</p>
<p>Industrial air pollution — bad for people’s health, bad for the planet — is strikingly concentrated in America among a small number of facilities like those in southwest Indiana, according to a nine-month Center for Public Integrity investigation.</p>
<p>The Center, which merged two federal datasets to create an unprecedented picture of air emissions, found that a third of the toxic air releases in 2014 from power plants, factories and other facilities came from just 100 complexes out of more than 20,000 reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A third of the greenhouse-gas emissions reported by industrial sites came from just 100, too. Some academics have a name for them: super polluters.</p>
<p>Twenty-two sites appeared on both lists. They include ExxonMobil’s massive refinery and petrochemical complex in Baytown, Texas, and a slew of coal-fired power plants, from FirstEnergy’s Harrison in West Virginia to Conemaugh in Pennsylvania, owned by companies including NRG Energy and PSEG. Four are in a single region — southwest Indiana. Together, owners of these 22 sites reported profits in excess of $58 billion in 2014.</p>
<p>Thomas O. McGarity, a law professor and regulatory scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, said the Center’s findings show that “a lot of the problem is isolated, and what we need to do is focus in on these plants.”</p>
<p>The EPA says it’s doing that. In a written statement,&nbsp;the agency said its sustained emphasis on the electric power sector has led to “dramatically” lower emissions from power plants since 1990 — “while the U.S. economy has continued to grow” — and it is working to get further improvements.</p>
<p>But not all the states are on board. Indiana is one of&nbsp;27&nbsp;suing the EPA over its Clean Power Plan, which would require reductions in climate-altering greenhouse-gas pollution from electric utilities. Indiana is also among the states that tried to block a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/mats">federal rule</a> to reduce emissions of dangerous metals and acid gases from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Its governor, Mike Pence — Donald Trump’s running mate — is a pro-coal, climate-change skeptic who says the costs of shifting to cleaner energy sources are <a href="http://www.in.gov/activecalendar/EventList.aspx?fromdate=10/1/2015&amp;todate=10/30/2015&amp;display=Month&amp;type=public&amp;eventidn=238313&amp;view=EventDetails&amp;information_id=233054">too high</a>.</p>
<p>Maintaining the status quo has costs as well: bad air that threatens health and fuels global warming. More toxic pollution from utility coal plants was sent into the air within 30 miles of Evansville than around any other mid-sized or large American city in 2014, a Center analysis shows. That same 30-mile radius accounted for the most greenhouse gases released by U.S. coal plants that year around any city.</p>
<p>Across the country, the top 100 facilities releasing greenhouse gases — almost all of them coal plants — collectively added more than a billion metric tons to the atmosphere in 2014. That’s the equivalent of a year’s worth of such emissions from 219 million passenger vehicles — nearly twice as many as the total number registered nationwide.</p>
<p>The top 100 for toxic air emissions vented more than 270 million pounds of chemicals in 2014. The vast majority of these chemicals have known health risks, according to the EPA; they can target the lungs, the brain or other organs, and some can affect the development of children born and unborn.</p>
<p>Eight of the super polluters have closed. The rest, including all four in Indiana, still operate.</p>
<p>Tina Dearing, 48, from Huntingburg, Indiana, was unexpectedly widowed in March when her 57-year-old husband died of a heart attack. Coronary artery disease, the death certificate says. Two months later, researchers published the results of a <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00378-0/abstract">10-year study</a> that showed why previous investigations kept finding shorter lifespans in areas with poorer air quality: pollution appears to accelerate harmful deposits in the arteries that cause nearly all heart attacks and most strokes.</p>
<p>Dearing’s family lives northeast of Evansville in a community within 30 miles of two of Indiana’s largest coal plants. She knows a variety of factors can play a role in an early death, but believes dirty air contributed in her husband’s case.</p>
<p>“The air quality stinks,” she said.</p>
<p>The Center, which relied on the EPA’s most recent final Toxics Release Inventory data to track total chemical releases, found that the people who live within three miles of the top 100 polluters are in some ways a cross-section of America: spread across half the states, all races, young and old, in a wide range of income brackets.</p>
<p>But more of them are poor or African-American than the country as a whole, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show. For instance, nearly 90 percent of the thousands living within three miles of ExxonMobil’s refinery and chemical plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, are black and about a third are below the poverty line. The complex, which ExxonMobil said has reduced total emissions over 40 percent since 1990, released more than 2.6 million pounds of chemicals to the air in 2014, including <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/MMG/MMG.asp?id=1141&amp;tid=249">hydrogen cyanide</a> — which can cause headaches, confusion and nausea — and known carcinogens such as benzene.</p>
<p>Mary B. Collins with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and two other researchers found similar disparities in a <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/015004">sophisticated analysis</a> this year, writing that “there exists a class of hyper-polluters — the worst-of-the-worst — that disproportionately expose communities of color and low income populations to chemical releases.”</p>
<p>While people nearby are the most affected, these facilities can degrade air far afield. Almost all the states with top toxic-air emitters send a significant amount of pollution to downwind states, according to EPA analyses — in some cases reaching people hundreds of miles away.</p>
<p>Some of the companies that own the nation’s biggest polluters say their emissions break no rules and are simply a reflection of a facility’s size. Others point out that they’ve ratcheted down releases in recent years, including after 2014.&nbsp;FirstEnergy said it has shuttered coal plants accounting for more than 5,000 megawatts of power generation since 2012.</p>
<p>NRG, which owns or co-owns several coal plants on the top-100 lists, said its toxic air emissions are falling, including a sharp drop in mercury in 2015 to comply with new federal regulations, and it has set aggressive climate goals — a 50-percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2030, 90 percent by 2050 — that would mean a major overhaul in the way it makes power.</p>
<p>“Things can’t continue on the same path as they have for decades,” Bruno Sarda, NRG’s chief sustainability officer, said of businesses worldwide. “More and more of our new revenue is coming from much lower-carbon sources.”</p>
<p>But coal is far from dead in America. And the tug-of-war over the future of electric power generation will affect everyone, some more than others. The influential utility industry. Blue-collar energy workers, from coal miners to solar-panel installers. Neighbors of coal plants. Electricity customers. People suffering from the <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-extends-allergy-season/">lengthening pollen season</a>, <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/sizzling-summers-20515">dangerous heat waves</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/climate-change-louisiana.html?_r=0">devastating floods</a> and <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/global-warming-2016-how-rising-sea-levels-displaced-native-american-tribe-louisiana-2339091">other effects</a> of global warming.</p>
<p>To watch this unfold, come to one of the biggest coal-burning states, a place with no renewable-energy requirements. No mandatory energy-efficiency targets to cut back on unnecessary, <a href="http://energy.gov/eere/why-energy-efficiency-upgrades">money-wasting</a> usage. No contingency plan for climate-change repercussions, which so worried local university researchers that a group of them sent a <a href="http://www.urbanhealth.iupui.edu/assets/documents/Letter%20from%20Indiana%20Climate%20Scientists.pdf">letter to the governor</a> last fall pleading with him to call on their expertise — a letter that went unanswered.</p>
<p>Come to Indiana.</p>
<p><strong>Living and dying in Evansville</strong></p>
<p>Kavon Cooper’s asthma, his mother says, “was a constant battle.” If he spent too much time outside in Evansville, he needed medicine to breathe. If he went to a friend’s house, he never knew if he’d have to go home in a hurry. Sometimes his asthma attacks were so bad that he ended up in the hospital. So he stayed inside as much as possible with the windows closed, playing video games, dreaming of testing them for a living someday.</p>
<p>For all that, the 12-year-old seemed to be getting better. It was a shock when he collapsed and died at home last year, lying in the hallway by the bathroom as his nebulizer ran in his bedroom. The coroner ruled that he’d suffered an acute asthma attack.</p>
<p>His mother, Kris Dasch, 47, couldn’t understand what had happened. The only explanation she got was that pollen had spiked.</p>
<p>So had air pollution. But no one had told her that.</p>
<p>Levels of toxic specks called <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics">fine particles</a> — typically formed by emissions from power plants, vehicles and factories — leapt up 20 micrograms per cubic meter the previous day, according to the air monitor less than a half-mile from the family’s home. They began to ease overnight, then jumped another 9 micrograms shortly before his death. Levels of <a href="https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution/sulfur-dioxide-basics#effects">sulfur dioxide</a>, another common power-plant pollutant, also rapidly increased at the same time that morning.</p>
<p>These are conditions that <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14582813">research</a> <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372644/pdf/nihms670501.pdf">suggests</a> can trigger a severe, even deadly, lung reaction. No one had told Dasch that, either. No doctor had ever discussed air quality with her, other than the effects of pollen.</p>
<p>Dr. Carrie A. Redlich, director of the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program, suspects that’s almost always the case. Many physicians don’t think about the connection between air pollution and health, Redlich said. They might not know, for example, that <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26073963">research</a> suggests tainted air and allergens such as pollen work like a one-two punch — together, the reaction is worse.</p>
<p>That both spiked in the lead-up to Kavon’s death makes them sound to Redlich like contributing factors. “That is an important interaction,” she said.</p>
<p>Now that air quality is on her mind, Dasch makes connections that didn’t stick out before. How well Kavon did on the rare occasions he took a trip outside the region. How a neighbor mentioned that her son’s asthma didn’t bother him as much when they lived in Arizona. How “there’s a lot of illness, a lot of sickness in this area.”</p>
<p>Vanderburgh County, which includes Evansville, has lower life expectancy compared with peer counties across the country and a higher rate of adults reporting fair-to-poor health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s <a href="http://wwwn.cdc.gov/CommunityHealth/profile/currentprofile/IN/Vanderburgh/">Community Health Status Indicators</a>. Some key influencers — poverty, unemployment and obesity — are actually better here than in most peer counties. What’s counterbalancing it are higher rates of smoking and air pollution.</p>
<p>Researchers already knew that poor air quality <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa040610#t=article">impairs children’s lung development</a>, but studies in the past few years have also suggested multiple <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2016/study-even-a-little-air-pollution-may-have-long-term-health-effects-on-developing-fetus.html">in utero</a> complications such as <a href="http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1408133/">autism spectrum disorder</a>, found a possible connection with childhood <a href="http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010004.full">psychiatric conditions</a> and linked exposure to damage that can trigger <a href="http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2015/04/25/Prolonged-exposure-to-air-pollution-linked-to-brain-damage-new-study-finds/1481429970069/">neurological problems in old age</a>. In 2013, the World Health Organization declared that <a href="https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/pr221_E.pdf">air pollution causes cancer</a>. Inflammation kicked off by the pollutants seems to be the common denominator.</p>
<p>“You add air pollution together with a lot of smokers, you are adding a lot of disease, premature death and costs that the state of Indiana incurs,” said Dr. Stephen Jay, a pulmonologist and emeritus professor of public health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who has <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/06/30/indiana-doctors-public-health-experts-rally-epa-clean-power-plan">pressed for a shift to clean energy</a>.</p>
<p>Lori Salma, a preschool teacher from Evansville, says she is struck by the number of young children using lung medication. She and her 14-year-old son both have asthma, and there are days “when I feel winded after being outside for longer than 15 minutes.”</p>
<p>She’s frustrated that for all they’ve done in their house to try to reduce flare-ups — no carpets, no curtains, no pets and, of course, no smoking — “there’s nothing we can do to control the air that we breathe.”</p>
<p>Tina Dearing&nbsp;said her late husband, Vincent, would come home to Huntingburg from business trips&nbsp;and complain that inhaling the local air felt like someone standing on his chest. Her oldest daughter had trouble breathing as an infant. And she wonders whether the air contributed to her daughter’s daughter, now 2, being born so small — not preterm, but just 5 1/2 pounds. (<a href="http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/4/457">Research</a> <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412014002700">suggests</a> that air pollution can decrease birth weight.)</p>
<p>“That’s why we limit our time outside,” Dearing said.</p>
<p>Rose Hoffman and her family lived in a community near Dearing's for years before moving in 2012 to Champaign, Illinois. Air quality was not the reason — in fact, when she occasionally heard bad news about it, “I didn’t want to believe it because we enjoyed living there so very much.” But what happened after they left, she said, “was stunning.”</p>
<p>Her nighttime wheezing stopped. Her youngest daughter no longer coughs at bedtime. The awful <a href="http://jhealthscope.com/?page=article&amp;article_id=35122">migraines</a> besetting two of her children went away almost entirely and hers eased. Her husband, a doctor, saw his asthma symptoms improve.</p>
<p>Hoffman, 45, had assumed genetics, or being the child of smokers, explained her severe lung damage following a bout with pneumonia in Indiana — her doctors had no idea why it happened. Now, she can’t help but think that air <a href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/pulmonology/pneumonia/17683">could have played a role</a> in that, too.</p>
<p><strong>The state of the air</strong></p>
<p>Southwest Indiana doesn’t look like an industry stronghold. Evansville, population 120,000, is the biggest city by far amid the rippling farmland. Rural Kentucky is just across the Ohio River, while the state capital of Indianapolis — and the massive steelmaking complexes in northern Indiana — are hours and a world away.</p>
<p>But this is coal country, where the state’s 6,500 mining jobs are concentrated. Six coal plants operate here: Gibson, Rockport, Petersburg, Warrick, A.B. Brown and F.B. Culley, all but one within 30 miles of Evansville, which is also near two coal plants in Kentucky. A large piece of southwest Indiana power travels on transmission lines to be used elsewhere because the plants make more than 40 percent of the state’s electricity in an area with just 6 percent of its people.</p>
<p>They also make a disproportionate share of the pollution. The plants accounted for a quarter of Indiana air emissions reported to the EPA’s toxics inventory in 2014, a remarkable concentration in the most <a href="http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140521.htm">manufacturing-intensive state</a> in the nation. Within the seven most southwestern counties here, three-quarters of the air pollution recorded in the inventory came from the six coal plants. And that doesn’t count the effects of the Kentucky plants.</p>
<p>Ask Mark Maassel about the air and he’ll recount the billions of dollars in environmental controls his members have installed over the last decade, some required by federal rules, some by EPA enforcement actions. He’s president of the Indiana Energy Association, a trade group for investor-owned utilities, and he sees “very significant changes and improvements in the environment of the state.”</p>
<p>Power plants’ sulfur dioxide emissions dropped 64 percent statewide between 2000 and 2014, he said. Nitrogen dioxide, which harms the lungs and contributes to ozone, often called smog, fell 69 percent, he said. As some coal plants shut down, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases">carbon dioxide</a> — which warms the atmosphere — also declined.</p>
<p>That’s meant cleaner air. Evansville-area concentrations of fine particles dropped nearly 30 percent over the past decade, EPA monitoring figures show.</p>
<p>But the air here is still worse than in most of the country.</p>
<p>Vanderburgh County had higher levels of fine particles than nearly 90 percent of the U.S. counties with air monitors from 2013 to 2015, EPA records of average annual concentrations show. Vanderburgh was nearly on par with Manhattan, even though that New York City borough has nine times as many people and a lot more particle-spewing vehicles.</p>
<p>Despite that — and despite some power plants here <a href="http://indianapolis.crains.com/article/epa-alleges-clean-air-act-violations-ipls-petersburg-plant">running</a> <a href="http://archive.courierpress.com/news/local/epa-says-air-quality-around-vectren-plant-not-up-to-new-sulfur-dioxide-restrictions---2bf94540-2b6d--369177761.html">afoul</a> of EPA rules in recent years, including for sulfur dioxide — the region isn’t violating federal air-quality standards for fine particles.</p>
<p>“The good news is, as of today, the entire monitoring network within the southwest Indiana area does demonstrate compliance,” said Scott Deloney, air programs branch chief at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.</p>
<p>The bad news: The standard for particles is based on total amount, but research is finding they aren’t equally unhealthy. The most toxic ones, a <a href="http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/advpub/2015/12/ehp.1509777.acco.pdf">2015 study</a> by 11 researchers in the U.S. and Canada suggested, come from burning coal.</p>
<p>What’s more, researchers keep finding harm from fine particles at levels below the standard, which the EPA is reviewing to determine if it’s still appropriate. A new <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27120296">study</a> led by a Johns Hopkins University researcher that focused on Boston — with markedly better particle levels than Evansville — found an association between that air pollutant and intrauterine inflammation, a key risk factor for premature birth.</p>
<p>In March, a New York University <a href="http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/15-10810/">study</a> estimated the share of premature births that can be attributed to fine particles. Indiana was second-highest in the country.</p>
<p>Premature birth can have lifelong consequences for children and is the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pretermbirth.htm">biggest cause</a> of infant mortality — a challenge for Indiana, tied for <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf">ninth-worst on infant death</a> among U.S. states. <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w7442.pdf">Some studies</a> have <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w22155">specifically linked</a> air pollution to infant death rates.</p>
<p>Dr. Edward McCabe, chief medical officer at the infant-focused March of Dimes, says the evidence of pregnancy harms is now substantial enough that action — not simply further study — is required: “We need to do something about it.”</p>
<p>But Indiana officials, focused on more widely understood risk factors such as smoking,&nbsp;which the state has high rates of, haven’t delved into pollution as a possible contributor. A 2014 <a href="http://www.in.gov/isdh/files/Addressing_Infant_Mortality_in_Indiana.pdf">state report</a> aimed at improving infant survival rates didn’t mention air quality at all.</p>
<p>Asked about it, Indiana State Department of Health spokeswoman Jennifer O’Malley said by email that “outdoor air quality is beyond the scope of ISDH and was not a consideration” in its infant-mortality work. She referred questions to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, which said it has no public-health specialists on staff.</p>
<p>Dr. Norma Kreilein, a pediatrician in southwest Indiana who has tried to draw attention to environmental-health problems she sees in the region, is fed up with the state.</p>
<p>“They’ve refused to connect pollution to public health,” Kreilein said.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Pence did not answer questions about the matter or anything else for this story, except for one asking for his perspective on coal.</p>
<p>“This abundant Hoosier resource supports over 26,000 Hoosier jobs and has historically provided Indiana’s economy with competitive electricity prices,” the spokeswoman, Kara Brooks, said by email. “Unfortunately, President Obama’s Clean Power Plan will drive up electricity prices, threaten electricity reliability, and put coal miners out of work.&nbsp; That is bad for Indiana and bad for America.”</p>
<p><strong>Pro-coal state</strong></p>
<p>As Pence himself put it last year, Indiana is a “<a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/07/09/pence-encourages-states-fight-greenhouse-gas-rules/29931537/">proud pro-coal state</a>,” and its energy use reflects that. It relies on coal for 75 percent of its electricity, at a time when the national average has fallen to 33 percent.</p>
<p>Pence gave up his shot at re-election this fall to run with Trump in the presidential election. The Democrat in the governor’s race? A former <a href="http://www.thebraziltimes.com/story/2325051.html">coal lobbyist</a>.</p>
<p>Pence’s popular Republican predecessor also was pro-coal, and supported a coal-gasification power plant project that <a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/money/2015/02/03/edwardsports-climbing-price-tag-pay/22808045/">went way over budget</a>. But former Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration also started a mandatory energy-efficiency program to cut back on waste and crafted rules to allow more people to go solar.</p>
<p>The efficiency program is gone now, replaced with a law that sets no reduction targets for utilities and has saved less energy, according to the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. State lawmakers tried last year to allow utilities to raise costs for customers with solar panels, stepping back only after they were flooded with complaints — solar advocates fear another attempt will come. And then there’s Indiana’s challenge with other states to the Clean Power Plan, now under a U.S. Supreme Court stay as a lower court considers the arguments.</p>
<p>That hasn’t kept change from happening, because national forces pressuring coal — cheap natural gas, falling costs for renewables, federal pollution rules — are here, too. As recently as 2009, more than 90 percent of Indiana’s electricity was coal-fired.</p>
<p>But if a complete energy transformation is inevitable, as some in Indiana assume, getting there quickly is not. There’s so much farther to go here than in most places.</p>
<p>Just a handful of states get a larger share of their electricity from coal, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration figures, and none is as populous as Indiana. The only place that burns more tons of coal for power is Texas, which makes four times the electricity and gets a lot of it from natural gas.</p>
<p>Indiana made 16 percent of its electricity from natural gas last year. That fuel’s unhealthy air emissions when burned are sharply lower than coal’s. (Natural-gas power plants aren’t tracked by the Toxics Release Inventory, which exempts certain operations from otherwise fairly broad coverage.) Gas plants also release <a href="https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&amp;t=11">40 to 50 percent less greenhouse gases</a> than equally sized coal plants, though that doesn’t include <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160315104213.htm">potent methane leaks</a> before the fuel arrives on site.</p>
<p>Then there’s wind and solar, which account for about 5 percent of Indiana’s electricity. Because of its lopsided energy profile, Indiana gets bigger health and environmental benefits from new wind turbines than any other state, and among the biggest from new solar panels, according to a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3718187/pdf/pnas.201221978.pdf">2013 study</a> by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. A <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf">2015 study</a> led by a Stanford University researcher suggested that Indiana would <a href="http://thesolutionsproject.org/infographic/#in">save money</a> by switching to renewables for all its energy needs.</p>
<p>But if Indiana’s rate of change over the last 10 years continues, power plants here will burn coal for decades to come.</p>
<p>“It will be a gradual thing,” predicted A. David Stippler, Indiana’s utility consumer counselor. “Hopefully a prudent, well-thought-out transition.”</p>
<p><strong>The pollution field trip</strong></p>
<p>From the back seat of a car, John Blair offered up acerbic commentary on the biggest air polluters of southwest Indiana. To your left, Duke Energy’s Gibson power plant and its coal-ash ponds. To your right, the little neighborhood where Duke provided bottled water to residents — later connecting them to a town water system — <a href="http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/coal-ash-ponds-pose-contamination-risk-drinking-water-66894/">after the coal ash contaminated their wells</a>.</p>
<p>Blair is a 69-year-old photographer with a <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/john-h-blair">1978 Pulitzer Prize</a>, but what he’s known for now is his work as volunteer head of a small environmental group in Evansville called <a href="http://valleywatch.net/">Valley Watch</a>. In decades of agitating for cleaner air and water, he’s often pressed the power plants — and their regulators — to do better.</p>
<p>The first stop on Blair’s tour was Gibson, fourth-largest coal plant in the country by capacity. Located 25 miles northwest of Evansville, it released 2.9 million pounds of air pollutants in 2014, according to the toxics inventory — much of that the lung irritant sulfuric acid, which the EPA says contributes to the formation of fine particles. Lead, arsenic and mercury, all neurotoxins, added up to a collective 1,000 pounds that year as well. And Gibson released more greenhouse gases than all but three other sites — not just power plants — nationwide.</p>
<p>“A godawful place,” Blair said, “that should be shut down.”</p>
<p>Duke spokeswoman Angeline Protogere said the company has “significantly reduced emissions” at Gibson, installing more than $1 billion in environmental controls there over the past 20 years. Some of that was negotiated in a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3111693-EPA-Consent-Order-Gibson.html">2014 settlement</a> after the EPA said it found violations. Toxics Release Inventory air emissions at Gibson have shrunk by three-quarters since 2006, including a 19 percent drop between 2014 and 2015, Protogere said. Greenhouse-gas emissions dropped by a third over the last decade as power generation also fell.</p>
<p>Duke operates its plants “within EPA and state regulatory limits that are designed to protect public health and the environment,” she said.</p>
<p>After Gibson came a stop at plants in Kentucky. Then back over the Ohio River into Indiana to see the looming, 1,038-foot stack at Rockport, tied for tenth-largest coal plant in the country.</p>
<p>Owner American Electric Power was sued in 1999 by the EPA, environmental groups and eight states (Indiana not among them) over its emissions at coal plants. As part of the <a href="https://www.aep.com/newsroom/newsreleases/?id=1411">2007 settlement</a>, in which AEP did not admit any violations, the company was to have installed pollution controls on one Rockport unit by 2017 and on the other by 2019. But a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-01/documents/aep-cdmod3.pdf">2013 rework</a> of the settlement allowed the company to push that off another eight to nine years — in the meantime installing less-expensive, less-effective controls — in exchange for retiring units at coal plants outside the region.</p>
<p>AEP spokeswoman Tammy Ridout said by email that Rockport “is among the most efficient power plants in the world, which means it uses less coal, and has fewer emissions, for each kilowatt of electricity generated.” AEP, she added, has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce the emissions and environmental impact of the Rockport Plant,” including controls to cut mercury releases by about 80 percent.</p>
<p>Rockport, like Gibson, is on both of the Center’s top 100 lists, but neither is the region’s biggest producer of air pollution tracked by the Toxics Release Inventory. That distinction goes to the AES Corp.’s Petersburg power plant, 40 miles northeast of Evansville, which reported sending more chemicals into the air in 2014 than all but eight other sites nationwide. It’s also 35th for greenhouse gases. AES, hit with EPA violation notices for Petersburg in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3034125-IPL-NOV-February-5-2016.html">February</a> and <a href="https://yosemite.epa.gov/r5/r5ard.nsf/fa120e741359b6cf8625759a00455537/86d0237ec94d200686257eff006b9201/$FILE/Indianapolis%20Power%20&amp;%20Light%20Company%20NOV%20and%20FOV.pdf">last year</a>, said in a statement that it recently installed $450 million in pollution controls there, and “we comply with all environmental regulations.”</p>
<p>Blair’s tour ended seven miles southeast of Evansville. There, the Warrick power plant run by Alcoa sits near F.B. Culley, one of two coal plants owned by the locally based Vectren Corp., which also co-owns part of Warrick. Vectren says its fleet is among the best controlled in the Midwest. Alcoa, whose complex is the fourth in southwest Indiana to make both top 100 lists, said it closed its smelter there in March and is running its power plant less now as a result.</p>
<p>Blair paused at a cemetery overlooking the smokestacks.</p>
<p>“You know,” he’d said earlier in the trip, “we’re subsidizing the coal industry big time with our health.”</p>
<p><strong>‘Incredibly powerful’ utilities</strong></p>
<p>Indiana utilities have influenced the state’s power mix beyond building coal plants in the first place. They <a href="http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059995965">gave a thumbs-up to ending mandatory state energy-efficiency targets</a>, calling the program “very costly” for customers despite consumer-advocate support. They pressed for extra solar charges, <a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/01/25/current-net-metering-system-unfair/22317479/">contending that rooftop-solar customers shift costs</a> to everyone else because they aren’t paying their fair share. (Some of the independent research on this national debate <a href="http://www.utilitydive.com/news/nevada-report-rooftop-solar-customers-shift-36m-in-annual-costs-to-other/424749/">is in agreement</a>; <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/rooftop-solar-net-metering-is-a-net-benefit/">much</a> of it is not.)</p>
<p>The Indiana Energy Association says the state doesn’t need mandatory energy-efficiency or renewable-energy targets — now common across the country — because its members are making so much progress voluntarily. Indiana ranked 42nd&nbsp;on the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s most recent <a href="http://aceee.org/state-policy/scorecard">state scorecard</a>. It ranked 24th last year for the share of electricity generated with wind or solar, far outstripped by top states — half of them in the Midwest.</p>
<p>Unless a state’s regulatory structure accounts for it, energy efficiency dampens utility revenues. So does customer-generated power. Some of Indiana’s utilities, including Evansville-based Vectren, specifically <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1096385/000109638516000123/vvc10k2015doc.htm">warn</a> investors that these options are a financial threat.</p>
<p>Consumer groups think the utilities — not the coal companies — make the most effective advocates for Indiana’s energy status quo.</p>
<p>“They’ve always been an incredibly powerful voice in the General Assembly,” said Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause Indiana, and “they’ve drug their feet on any type of movement away from coal.”</p>
<p>Electric utilities are among the largest corporate contributors to state elections in Indiana. They spent nearly 100 times as much as pro-environment groups in the past five years, and far more than mining companies, according to National Institute on Money in State Politics data.</p>
<p>Their state lobbying, which totals hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, includes spreading freebies around to legislators: dinners at McCormick &amp; Schmick's, cocktails at Moe &amp; Johnny’s, rounds of golf, tickets to Indiana Pacers and Indianapolis Colts games. Utilities are also the <a href="http://www.worksfoundation.org/contributions/">biggest donors</a> to a state foundation that covers costs of <a href="http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/indiana/Pence-defies-EPA--pleasing-donors-8715563">economic-development travel for the governor</a>.</p>
<p>Among the top recipients of their contributions and gifts is state Rep. Heath VanNatter, vice chair of the House Utilities and Energy Committee. He voted for the solar bill utilities wanted. He put forth the amendment that ultimately killed the energy-efficiency program. VanNatter, a Republican who represents an area north of Indianapolis, did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>The utilities say the transition away from coal is best handled at a measured pace. They’re increasing their use of alternatives, but a post-coal Indiana is a “long, long ways into the future,” said Maassel, president of the Indiana Energy Association, which <a href="http://www.indianaenergy.org/epas-clean-power-plan-mandate.html">opposes</a> the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.</p>
<p>“In anything, generally speaking, the faster you do it, the more expensive it becomes,” he said.</p>
<p>Maassel said more than 730,000 Indiana households have after-tax incomes under $30,000 and pay a sizable chunk of that for energy, so utilities are mindful of the cost of change.</p>
<p>“The existing facilities many times enjoy an economic advantage because they’ve been paid for to some level, and upgrading them with additional [pollution] controls … makes sense,” Maassel said.</p>
<p>This reasoning galls Kerwin Olson. He’s executive director of the Citizens Action Coalition, an Indianapolis consumer and environmental advocacy organization that often clashes with utilities. Olson contends that the most cost-effective option is to stop using coal sooner, not later.</p>
<p>He’s not talking about health and climate costs, though <a href="http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00143">research suggests</a> they make the true price of coal much higher. He means people’s actual utility bills.</p>
<p>“If you’re a utility company with a guaranteed rate of return and the more you spend, the more you make, you’re going to choose the most expensive option,” he said. “<em>That’s</em> why we continue to rely almost exclusively on coal.”</p>
<p>Olson said that while coal-plant pollution controls were once the cheapest option, that’s no longer the case. Efficiency and wind aren’t only cleaner but are also less expensive than coal, he said, while utility-scale solar is on par.</p>
<p>That’s clearly the case for <a href="https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90.pdf">new construction</a>. Comparing piecemeal coal-plant retrofits to the alternatives is trickier, but David Schlissel with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which advocates for reduced dependence on fossil fuels, said many coal plants are uneconomic even without additional controls.</p>
<p>Cheaper electricity from gas and renewables prevents them from selling as much to the grid as they once did. In states such as Indiana where utilities own the plants, he said, ratepayers take the hit.</p>
<p>Utility analyst Paul Patterson said power companies aren’t necessarily wedded to coal — some are moving aggressively on renewables. But it’s an industry that craves stability, said Patterson, with New York-based Glenrock Associates.</p>
<p>And in states that have staked out pro-coal positions, he said, “there may be a whole variety of political issues” at play. AEP tells investors in its most recent <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/4904/000000490416000056/ye15aep10k.htm">annual report</a> that it wants to rely more on natural gas, energy efficiency and renewables “where there is regulatory support.”</p>
<p><strong>‘Beyond Coal’ in coal country</strong></p>
<p>In southwest Indiana, a future without coal would unpredictably reorder industries and people’s lives. Most of the state’s 6,500 mining jobs are here. They’re a small piece of the region’s employment — about 2 percent — but their reach is widened by the truck drivers, suppliers and others whose jobs depend on coal. Mining — like utilities — also provides some of the best-paying work. Property taxes from the power plant owners boost small-town budgets.</p>
<p>At the United Mine Workers of America’s old union hall in Boonville, 30 minutes from Evansville, a half-dozen retired coal miners gathered in June to talk about their anxieties — in particular their frustration that Congress had yet to vote on health and pension benefits endangered in the wake of coal-company bankruptcies. Some of the politicians loudly proclaiming themselves pro-coal are not beloved here.</p>
<p>All of these men worked at a Boonville surface mine that supplied a local coal plant and shut down in 1998, its closure blamed in part on the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/highlights-1990-clean-air-act-amendments">Clean Air Act amendments of 1990</a>. Marvin Bruner, who worked there 31 years, had to retire early and accept a smaller pension. Randal Underhill had to travel all over on construction jobs for power plants, living out of motels. David Hadley had to work in Indianapolis during the week and come home to his family on weekends.</p>
<p>But in this group, opinions of air-pollution regulation are nuanced. They’ve seen coal companies open new mines in the area since the Clean Air Act amendments — non-union ones. Bil Musgrave, 60, who contracted a rare bile-duct cancer he links to working amid hazardous waste dumped in the Boonville mine, is a Sierra Club member.</p>
<p>He feels the tension between the benefits and problems coal brings. You can’t be a miner without it, and yet Musgrave knows it’s burned to make far more electricity than his region needs. The Toxics Release Inventory figures for a nearby coal plant, he said, show “an enormous amount of pollution.”</p>
<p>Hadley, co-chair of the United Mine Workers’ Indiana political action committee and a former state utility regulatory commissioner, wishes the industry had pushed full speed ahead on clean-technology innovations 15 years ago. What if <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/88c187b4-5619-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz4GI3F7mp2">carbon capture</a> were economically viable and widely used today? What good does switching to natural gas do, he says, if it doesn’t solve the carbon problem?</p>
<p>Hadley fears coal’s window of opportunity is all but closed. That would leave transition away from it as the only option — “a transition with consequences.”</p>
<p>Wendy Bredhold, a local Sierra Club representative, is a former Evansville city councilwoman who thinks about economic consequences, too. As the nation increasingly turns to renewables and big companies demand them, what will that mean for local growth prospects? Wouldn’t coal workers do better, she says, if state officials helped people with the transition instead of fighting it?</p>
<p>The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign has <a href="http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/inside-war-on-coal-000002">notched successes across the country</a>, preventing new plants from opening and convincing regulators that old plants weren’t cost effective and should close. An Indianapolis coal plant it targeted switched to natural gas this year.</p>
<p>Now the group is campaigning in Evansville, trying to do this work in an area where, as Bredhold puts it, “coal runs generations deep.” An Evansville event the Sierra Club organized this month drew 100 people but also attracted angry Facebook comments.</p>
<p>Bredhold sees health problems and the accelerating effects of climate change, and doesn’t think she can afford to fail.</p>
<p>“We can’t wait until these plants just can’t run anymore,” she said. “I want this transition to be as easy as it can be for my community, but it’s one that has to happen.”</p>
<p><strong>Secondhand pollution</strong></p>
<p>The Cessna four-seater raced down a runway in Fort Meade, Maryland, loaded with equipment to measure ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gases. For more than two decades, the Maryland Department of the Environment has tracked where pollutants come from. Agency scientists and university researchers have worked together to prove that other states routinely send unwanted contributions their way.</p>
<p>This isn’t academic. Pollution drifting over state lines complicates local efforts to clean the air.</p>
<p>Indiana — 280 miles from Maryland at its nearest point — is one of the culprits, according to both Maryland and EPA analyses.</p>
<p>Closer states have a bigger impact on Maryland, but the reach of Indiana’s pollutants is impressive. An <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/airtransport/CSAPR/whereyoulive.html">EPA analysis</a> for a 2011 rule to reduce power-plant emissions that exacerbate interstate problems with fine particles and ozone showed Indiana significantly contributing to air pollution in 11 states as far northeast as Connecticut. Only Kentucky topped that, at 12.</p>
<p>Traveling pollution is why nine East Coast states petitioned the EPA <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/94770.html">in 2013</a> to make nine other states — Indiana among them — do more on ozone. That petition is pending; some officials <a href="http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/air/176a/2016-04-18_-_section_176a_-_noi.pdf">told the EPA</a> this year that they plan to sue to force a decision.</p>
<p>Indiana and the other targeted states, in a <a href="http://air.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Petitioned%20state%20response%20letter2-14-2014.pdf">2014 letter</a> to the EPA, said they’ve made “tremendous progress” on air quality and the petition’s arguments are out of date.</p>
<p>Dave Foerter, executive director of the Ozone Transport Commission, which advises the EPA on interstate smog problems, said meteorological conditions made for better years in 2013 and 2014. But generally, the wind blows Midwestern pollution to the Northeast, and that problem continues, he said.</p>
<p>“Indiana tends to throw emissions a long way,” Foerter said.</p>
<p>That’s less likely to come from its cars than its power plants, because the plants’ smokestacks give pollutants the height they need to travel, according to Maryland regulators. New York, analyzing 2015 power-plant releases, discovered that Indiana put out four times as much nitrogen oxides — a key ozone ingredient — for every megawatt-hour of electricity as New York did.</p>
<p>The Maryland Department of the Environment’s Tad Aburn isn’t suggesting car-heavy Maryland doesn’t make its own pollution. It does, affecting three other states, according to the EPA’s analysis. But Maryland’s power-plant rules are stricter than federal ones, and Aburn says the agency’s detective work shows the air improves when states work together.</p>
<p>“We need to do more,” he said.</p>
<p><strong>The climate in Indiana</strong></p>
<p>Climate change, like air pollution, requires group efforts to combat. But in Indiana — where industrial greenhouse-gas emissions are second only to Texas in the United States and exceed those from Israel, Greece and 185 other <a href="http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_coun.html">countries</a> — the official position is inertia.</p>
<p>Pence once called climate change a “<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010415121513/http:/mikepence.com/warm.html">myth</a>” and now positions himself as a skeptic: “I think the science is very mixed on the subject,” he told <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30641297/ns/msnbc-hardball_with_chris_matthews/t/hardball-chris-matthews-tuesday-may/%20-%20.V4fgQuuDGko#.V6T85riANBd">MSNBC</a> in 2009, an assertion he&nbsp;repeated until he said on the campaign trail this week that human activities&nbsp;have "<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/mike-pence-climate-change-228799">some&nbsp;impact</a>" on&nbsp;climate. Not only is his state suing over the Clean Power Plan, but he also <a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2016/02/20/pence-defy-coal-plant-rules/80674462/">vowed</a> that Indiana won’t strategize to reduce greenhouse gases even if the rule does take effect. He’s an <a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2016/07/29/pence-addresses-bikers-ahead-alec-speech/87680158/">enthusiastic supporter</a> of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of companies and conservative lawmakers — popular in the Indiana state house — that has encouraged <a href="http://alecclimatechangedenial.org/anti-climate-change-agenda/">anti-climate initiatives</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/">Polling</a> shows more than half of Hoosiers say climate change is indeed happening, though, and that includes some local officials. Jim Brainard, a Republican from the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel, is among the Indiana mayors who see economic opportunities in the shifting energy landscape and are taking action in their cities.</p>
<p>But a variety of Indiana residents think statewide efforts are crucial, and they’re pressing officials to do something. What’s driving them is the knowledge that the science <a href="http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/">isn’t mixed</a> on whether the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-have-almost-certainly-blown-the-1-5-degree-global-warming-target-63720?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Issue:%202016-08-16%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:6917%5D&amp;utm_term=Utility%20Dive">world is warming</a>, whether humans are largely to blame and whether that’s bad for us. The major point of debate among scientists now is <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160407221445.htm">just how bad it will be</a>.</p>
<p>Last fall Gabriel Filippelli coordinated a <a href="http://www.urbanhealth.iupui.edu/assets/documents/Letter%20from%20Indiana%20Climate%20Scientists.pdf">letter</a>, signed by 23 Indiana academics, that urged Pence to draw on the educators’ in-state expertise on climate and its impacts. It recommended a plan for “mitigation and adaptation strategies … to protect energy and transportation infrastructure, the health of the public and economic development.”</p>
<p>“It actually wasn’t intended to be political, but rather, ‘You have a lot of resources right here in Indiana, in your back yard, people who are expert in this and can give you better advice than maybe you’re receiving,’” said Filippelli, a professor of earth sciences at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.</p>
<p>He said he got “zero” response from the Pence administration, which also did not answer the Center’s questions about the matter.</p>
<p>Anita Wylie is trying a different tack. She’s suing.</p>
<p>Wylie, an attorney who once worked for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, is asking a trial court in Indianapolis to make the state develop a climate action plan. It’s something <a href="http://www.c2es.org/us-states-regions/policy-maps/climate-action-plans">two-thirds of states now have</a>, and it’s what the academics’ letter meant by mitigation and adaptation strategies.</p>
<p>A Pence spokeswoman did not respond to a question about the lawsuit, but the state argued in a motion to dismiss the case that it is not required to write a climate plan.</p>
<p>Wylie, now retired, says she is pursuing the lawsuit for her young grandsons and in memory of her father, a meteorologist deeply concerned about climate change.</p>
<p>“Indiana’s my state,” she said. “I’m embarrassed by the positions that the government’s taken.”</p>
<p><em>Hopkins reported this story with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism&nbsp;and the&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/event/2016-national-health-journalism-fellowship"><em>National Fellowship</em></a><em>, programs&nbsp;of the University of Southern California </em><a href="http://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/"><em>Center for Health Journalism</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><em>Center for Public Integrity news developer Chris Zubak-Skees contributed to this story.</em></p>
Seven coal-fired power plants operate within 30 miles of Evansville, Indiana, including two pictured here in the nearby community of Newburgh.&nbsp;Industrial air pollution is remarkably concentrated in the United States — a small percentage of sites is responsible for a third of the toxic-air and greenhouse-gas emissions reported by companies in 2014.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsForty-two years later, OSHA OKs rule protecting workers from silicahttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/19486OSHA approves rule limiting workers&#039; exposure to silica despite opposition from businesses.Occupational Safety and Health Administration;European Agency for Safety and Health at Work;Ceramic materials;Silicon dioxide2016-03-24T15:00:37-04:002016-03-24T10:49:23-04:00<p>New workplace limits for a lung-damaging and ubiquitous substance called silica are about to take effect, decades after federal health experts warned that the nation’s existing rule was dangerously lax.</p>
<p>Silica, found in rock and sand, poses a hazard when pulverized to a fine dust and inhaled — a problem on <a href="https://www.osha.gov/Publications/3362silica-exposures.pdf">construction sites</a>, during <a href="https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/hydraulic_frac_hazard_alert.html">hydraulic fracturing operations</a> and at a variety of other workplaces. The substance can trigger silicosis, a lung-scarring condition that can kill by suffocation, as well as lung cancer and kidney disease.</p>
<p>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2016-04800.pdf">new standard</a> — announced today — replaces a rule set in 1971. It reduces the allowable exposure limit to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, five times less than the current limit for the construction and shipyard sectors and half the current level for other workplaces.</p>
<p>Industry groups that <a href="https://www.agc.org/news/2015/03/26/new-study-finds-osha-officials-underestimated-cost-silica-rule-construction-industry">argued against the change</a> call the rule a job-killer that will cost far more than OSHA anticipates. Worker-safety advocates, disputing that, say silica is a worker-killer and the standard is long overdue. OSHA estimates the rule will prevent about 640 deaths a year.</p>
<p>“The current OSHA standards are woefully out of date,” Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s director of safety and health for the union federation, said by email. The 1971 rule was “based on science from the 1920's, long before many of the health effects of silica exposure — like lung cancer — were known.”</p>
<p>Workers exposure to silica is a prime example of the country’s broken system for protecting Americans on the job, the Center for Public Integrity <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17518/slow-motion-tragedy-american-workers">found in a 2015 investigation</a>. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/1970/75-120.html">urged</a> in 1974 — 42 years ago — that OSHA substantially tighten the silica limit. But OSHA, <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections">hemmed in</a> by court rulings, corporate resistance and procedures and that have turned the process of setting a single standard into a years-long marathon, has updated few of its 470 exposure limits since adopting them shortly after the agency’s 1971 birth.</p>
<p>The agency itself has <a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/annotated-pels/index.html">warned</a> that many of its exposure limits don’t work as intended — they’re not low enough to protect worker health. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of chemicals made or used in the country have no exposure limits at all.</p>
<p>OSHA proposals often prompt passionate opposition from businesses, which fear the expense or difficulty of complying. A <a href="https://www.agc.org/news/2015/03/26/new-study-finds-osha-officials-underestimated-cost-silica-rule-construction-industry">coalition of construction-sector groups</a> said last year that the silica rule would cost their industry $5 billion a year, 10 times more than the agency’s estimate. OSHA says its cost estimates tend to be wrong the other direction – <a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/index.html#6B">higher</a> than what businesses ultimately pay. It estimates the new rule will cost an average of about $1,520 per affected workplace each year.</p>
<p>Brian Turmail, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America, said earlier this week that cost isn’t the only consideration. The group’s members have found that the technology to get silica levels down to the new standard does not exist, he said. A number of firms have trouble complying with the current rule, he said.</p>
<p>“We’ve been anxious to find a way to improve worker health and safety in a way we feel is attainable,” he said.</p>
<p>OSHA said it has <a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/factsheets/OSHA_FS-3681_Silica_Construction.v2.html">offered</a> construction firms a variety of ways to comply and suggested tools to get the job done. Seminario said there are “<a href="https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=OSHA-2010-0034-4223&amp;attachmentNumber=1&amp;disposition=attachment&amp;contentType=pdf">many proven control measures</a>,” including vacuum systems on tools, enclosed cabs for equipment operations and water to suppress dust.</p>
<p>The proposal was controversial even before it was formally proposed. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which scrutinizes would-be rules for cost implications, sat on the silica standard for 2 ½ years — while meeting with opponents — before giving OSHA the go-ahead to officially propose it in 2013.</p>
<p>“Corporate lobbyists meeting with OMB officials consistently outnumbered the labor and public health advocates calling for higher standards,” consumer-rights advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement this week.</p>
<p>But those delays, if among the more recent, were just the latest in a string of fits and starts. The silica update took so long that New York resident Chris Johnson, born weeks after the 1974 warning that the limit wasn’t protective, grew up, became a mason and nearly died of silicosis — well before OSHA finally proposed the new limit. Johnson was profiled in the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17518/slow-motion-tragedy-american-workers">Center’s investigation</a>.</p>
<p>The rule will be published in the Federal Register Friday and will take effect 90 days later. Implementation will be staggered with most requirements kicking in within two years.</p>
<p>Celeste Monforton, a lecturer at George Washington University and a former U.S. Department of Labor analyst and adviser, is glad to see a new standard in place. But she worries about the state of the country’s worker-safety efforts.</p>
<p>“Our system for protecting workers is just so stagnant that new regulations to protect workers are such a rare occurrence,” she said. “And yet at the same time, we have new hazards that workers are exposed to, and many of these old ones for which there are no regulations.”</p>
A worker at a construction site in Rockville, Maryland, breaks up concrete with a jackhammer, creating a cloud of silica dust. The worker is wearing no respiratory protection and no water is being applied to suppress the dust, putting him at risk of disease.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkins Compensation program for sick nuclear workers plagued by problems, ombudsman findshttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/19454The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program has been a target of criticism from former workers and elected officials.2016-03-21T12:43:59-04:002016-03-21T12:43:59-04:00<p>People who fell ill after working in the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex continued to struggle with a federal compensation program beset by confusing rules and incomplete records, according to the latest official assessment of the program.</p>
<p>Congress created the program after it became clear that the country’s nuclear-weapons effort routinely endangered workers’ health in the name of national security. In the nearly 16 years since the <a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/">Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act</a> passed, the program has been the frequent target of criticism — from former workers, survivors, advocates and elected officials who have tried to help people navigate the system.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.dol.gov/eeombd/2014annualreport/2014.pdf">new report</a>, released Friday, focuses on 2014 and comes from an ombudsman’s office created by Congress in 2004 to aid the program’s claimants. Every year the office’s staffers summarize the problems brought to their doorstep, and every year those problems are numerous.</p>
<p>“We receive complaints and grievances addressing practically every aspect of the ... claims process,” the report says.</p>
<p>The program has helped tens of thousands of sick workers or their survivors, paying out more than $12 billion in compensation and health care since 2000 for illnesses ranging from cancer to debilitating lung diseases. But advocates who help claimants say it’s often a struggle to get approved, and many never manage it. Problems can also continue afterward, as people seek the medical care they’ve been promised.</p>
<p>A Center for Public Integrity investigation in December detailed some of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/12/11/18936/ailing-angry-nuclear-weapons-workers-fight-compensation">key difficulties for ex-workers</a>&nbsp;trying to get accepted into the program, including disputes over the level of their toxic exposures at top-secret facilities where records of those exposures — if they existed at all — were sometimes lost, destroyed or falsified. That issue was covered&nbsp;in the ombudsman’s report.</p>
<p>“Since Congress recognized that there were unmonitored exposures and other continuing problems, claimants question the deference that ought to be accorded to the records maintained by these facilities,” the report says.</p>
<p>The program is run by the U.S. Department of Labor, which declined to comment on the report because it is preparing a formal response, due to Congress July 6. But earlier, the agency’s Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation said it follows the rules and noted that the program was never intended to compensate all the ex-workers who fell ill. Approvals are higher than what was initially expected, the division says.</p>
<p>“We have to evaluate the likelihood that this cancer is due to work or not due to work, and … there [are] always going to be people that are going to get an answer that they don’t want to hear,” John Vance, the program’s policy chief, said last year. “It’s the perfect intersection of politics, science, human emotion and all of that. It’s a difficult, difficult situation.”</p>
<p>Among the other issues the report highlighted:</p>
<ul>
<li>Hard-to-find information. The Labor Department issues bulletins, circulars and other documents that explain aspects of the program and dictate policy. The ombudsman’s office heard from people who relied on the information in one document, “only to later discover that their claim is impacted by a relevant discussion of the same issue found in another document.” They found it “particularly frustrating” that the document they relied on made no mention of the other one.</li>
<li>Inconsistencies. The program&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/PolicyandProcedures/finalbulletinshtml/EEOICPABulletin08-38.htm">says in writing</a>&nbsp;that scientific studies about the effects of a substance on animals can be helpful in some cases, given that certain “chemicals used in the production of nuclear weapons are so unique and exotic that no broad-based studies of their health effects exist.” But a man who submitted animal-exposure evidence told the ombudsman’s office that program officers denied his claim, eventually explaining that “we generally do not recognize data obtained from animal studies.”</li>
<li>Lack of assistance. Claimants told the office that no one at the agency explained to them that, for instance, they can look at an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/seminfo.htm">online database of exposure information</a>&nbsp;by facility and job to help them pull together the evidence they need. Claimants also said program information “is sometimes worded using legal, scientific, and/or medical terminology that is difficult to understand.”</li>
<li>Post-approval problems. The ombudsman received calls from people with approved claims who ran into issues with their medical care. For instance, “we were made aware of instances where oxygen providers terminated service to claimants” because of Labor Department billing issues. Some doctors also refused to continue providing services “because they felt that this program required too much paperwork.”</li>
</ul>
<p>Terrie Barrie, a founding member of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, whose husband worked at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado, called the report “an honest and accurate account of the problems the claimants encounter with the program.” She was particularly glad to see it note that the law requires the Labor Department to help people with their claims.</p>
<p>“It is incongruent for [the department] &nbsp;to require the claimants to provide evidence for each and every step of the claims process and not provide that evidence they have in their possession to the claimants,” Barrie wrote in an email. “This program ... is supposed to be claimant-friendly and non-adversarial.”</p>
Workers label a container of “highly radioactive sludge” on the Hanford site, a former nuclear-weapons complex where cleanup has been underway since 1989.&nbsp;
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsReport underlines recent worker hazards at old weapons plantshttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/19113A compensation program for former workers at Energy Department sites assumes safety improved significantly after 1995. That may not be true.Industrial hygiene;Occupational safety and health;National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health;United States Department of Energy;Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program;Nuclear labor issues;United States Department of Labor;Fluor Corporation;IDLH2016-01-07T14:56:07-05:002016-01-07T14:55:42-05:00<p>The toxic morass that was America’s nuclear weapons complex is no secret. Hazardous conditions in places like the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/12/11/18936/ailing-angry-nuclear-weapons-workers-fight-compensation" target="_blank">Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant</a>&nbsp; in Ohio moved Congress in 2000 to create a compensation program for former workers who developed illnesses that may have been caused by radiation or chemical exposures.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/">program</a>, run by the U.S. Department of Labor, assumes that conditions significantly improved at nuclear sites after 1995 and processes claims accordingly. A new <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2678331-NIOSH-HHE-at-Portsmouth.html" target="_blank">report</a> by federal health investigators, however, casts doubt on that assumption.</p>
<p>The report from the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/" target="_blank">National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health</a>, dated December 21, 2015, summarizes the results of a NIOSH inspection at Portsmouth begun two years earlier. The Center for Public Integrity, which highlighted&nbsp;historical problems at the site in an article last month, obtained it this week from a former worker.</p>
<p>The most notable finding: air sampling in Building 326 of the now-closed uranium enrichment plant, undergoing <a href="http://www.fluor.com/projects/usdoe-nuclear-decontamination-decommissioning" target="_blank">decontamination and decommissioning</a>, showed the presence of <a href="http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/hydrofluoricacid/basics/facts.asp" target="_blank">hydrogen fluoride</a>, a potentially lethal gas, in concentrations up to 30 times the NIOSH “ceiling limit,” described as “a value that should never be exceeded.” Apart from its capacity to kill, hydrogen fluoride, commonly known as HF, can cause chronic lung disease, skin damage and blindness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p>
<p>Investigators also noted that there was no sampling for <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ipcsneng/neng0930.html" target="_blank">nitrogen dioxide</a>, another dangerous gas. Acute effects of exposure include vomiting, labored breathing and dizziness, according to the CDC; there also can be long-term effects on the immune system and the lungs.</p>
<p>Hydrogen fluoride,&nbsp;a remnant of production in Building 326, can be unleashed by the cutting of pipes, compressors and converters. Nitrogen dioxide is generated by the cutting itself.</p>
<p>The NIOSH team met with 16 people who worked at Portsmouth at the time,&nbsp;10 of whom “expressed concerns about poor communication between management and employees and concerns about retaliation for reporting safety problems,” the report says. “Concerns included having inadequate information about chemical(s) used, chemical exposures, and potential health effects.” Five workers reported rashes they believed to be work-related.</p>
<p>“Several employees expressed concern that they felt rushed to complete job tasks and that some managers placed production goals ahead of safety,” the report says. “Employees believed these problems have led to near misses and accidents.”</p>
<p>The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program is intended to provide payments to and cover the health care of people harmed by working at nuclear-weapons sites.&nbsp;Many claimants and some members of Congress find the program deeply flawed and question the Labor Department’s rationale for denying claims.</p>
<p>A year-old department circular <a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/PolicyandProcedures/finalcircularhtml/EEOICPACircular15-06.htm">directs</a> claims examiners to presume that no significant exposure to any toxic agents occurred after 1995 unless there is “compelling data to the contrary.” Advocates who have pushed the Labor Department to reverse the policy say the NIOSH report is the latest example of recent problems. They worry about undocumented hazards going unnoticed.</p>
<p>“This is probably not an isolated incident,” said Deb Jerison, director of the Energy Employees Claimant Assistance Project, whose physicist father worked at the Mound Laboratory in Ohio and died of bone cancer. “If people don’t look, they won’t find.”</p>
<p>Labor Department spokeswoman Amanda McClure said the NIOSH report doesn’t require a policy change.</p>
<p>The department’s circular, based on Energy Department efforts to improve safety throughout the weapons complex, “does not negate the fact that there may have been higher levels of exposures at certain sites in individual cases after 1995,” McClure wrote in an email. The agency “takes those circumstances into account when they arise, and we will take NIOSH's Portsmouth facility report into consideration on a case-by-case basis.”</p>
<p>The dismantling of the Portsmouth plant involves more than 2,000 workers and is being overseen by Fluor BWXT, a contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy. In a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2678333-NIOSH-HHE-at-Portsmouth-Fluor-Response.html" target="_blank">letter</a> to NIOSH dated December 3, 2015, Fluor BWXT said it has “robust” industrial hygiene and hazard-communication programs and closely monitors workplace hazards. The company said it had taken more than 57,000 air samples for radiological hazards in Building 326 since 2012. These samples, combined with urine testing, “have shown no reportable internal exposures” to workers, it said.</p>
<p>In an interview, Bob French, Fluor BWXT’s environment, safety, health and quality director, said NIOSH was invited to Portsmouth in 2013 by both the company and the United Steelworkers union.</p>
<p>Last month’s report brought no surprises because NIOSH kept Fluor BWXT officials apprised during its two-year inquiry. As NIOSH would raise safety issues, the company would correct them, French said.</p>
<p>“There’s nothing we want more than to assure the safety of our workers,” he said. Building 326 is targeted for demolition in June 2017.</p>
<p>Energy Department spokeswoman Joshunda Sanders wrote in an&nbsp;email that the agency "considers worker health and safety to be a top priority, and we take all recommendations to improve safety seriously.&nbsp;This [NIOSH] letter is being reviewed in that context."</p>
<p>Jeff Walburn, a former security guard at Portsmouth, said he found the NIOSH report disconcerting.</p>
<p>On the morning of July 26, 1994, Walburn was working in the L-Cage – a storage area for contaminated liquid waste – in Building 326. The plant, then still in production, was operated by Lockheed Martin.</p>
<p>The atmosphere suddenly changed, Walburn said, and he became agitated. Another guard was in the same area.&nbsp; “It was like we were being stung by bees all over,” Walburn said. His lungs were burned. His hair fell out in clumps. He wound up in the emergency room and spent 11 days in the hospital and two months recovering after that.</p>
<p>Walburn blamed his injury on HF exposure. NIOSH’s findings suggest that similar risks remain for decommissioning workers, he said.</p>
<p>“There are thousands of miles of pipe and pockets of gas trapped within those thousands of miles of pipe,” said Walburn, who brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Lockheed Martin. “The 326 [building] is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”</p>
<p>In a written statement to the Center last month, Lockheed Martin said it had investigated worker allegations of safety lapses and “could not substantiate” them.</p>
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant produced highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and other uses from 1954 to 2001.
Jim Morrishttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jim-morrisJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsAiling, angry nuclear-weapons workers fight for compensationhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/18936Critics say U.S. program to compensate sick nuclear-weapons workers relies on bad data and is too quick to reject claims.Occupational safety and health;Radioactivity;National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health;Carcinogen;Prostate cancer;Ionizing radiation;Radiobiology;Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program;Radiation dose reconstruction;Radiation therapy;Medical physics;Dosimetry2015-12-11T08:59:41-05:002015-12-11T05:00:00-05:00<p>PORTSMOUTH, Ohio — Paul Brogdon was a security guard at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant during the last stages of the Cold War, protecting stockpiles of bomb-grade uranium from would-be terrorists.</p>
<p>Brogdon and the other guards would take their turns in the Blue Goose, an armored box truck used to transport cylinders of highly enriched uranium from Building 326, the final stop in the production chain, to a vault within Building 345, a distance of about a half-mile. They would sit inches from the cylinders, which gave off radiation, and had to stay in the truck until it was unloaded, a process that could take an hour or more. They wore no protective gear apart from their uniforms.</p>
<p>Other times, they would be posted just beyond what they cynically called the “magic tape” — the yellow plastic tape used to demarcate contaminated areas of the plant. Workers inside the tape wore hazmat suits and supplied-air respirators. The guards had no such equipment.</p>
<p>“We were non-people,” said Brogdon, 71.</p>
<p>After retiring, Brogdon and at least eight other former guards developed prostate cancer, which they blame on radiation exposures at Portsmouth. Fifteen years ago, Congress created a compensation program for people like them.</p>
<p>But they have not fared well. Brogdon and others who filed claims saw them denied by the U.S. Department of Labor, which has the authority to provide lump-sum payments and cover medical care for ex-employees of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex who fell ill after working in environments where production trumped safety. Many other civilian veterans of the Cold War are similarly demoralized, having failed to navigate a Byzantine program, troubled from the start, that tries to estimate toxic exposures at secrecy-cloaked sites where records often were lost, destroyed, falsified — or simply didn’t exist.</p>
<p>“A lot of claimants have no confidence in the records,” said Malcolm D. Nelson, the Labor Department’s <a href="http://www.dol.gov/eeombd/">ombudsman</a> for the program.</p>
<p>It’s not that the department never approves claims. Compared with state workers’ compensation programs, which have an <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/04/18816/disease-victims-often-shut-out-workers-comp-system">abysmal record</a> dealing with complex occupational illness, the <a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/weeklystats.htm">payout</a> is notable: $12 billion in more than 74,000 cases since 2000.</p>
<p>But nearly half the cases over that period have been turned down. The denial rate would be even higher if not for exemptions carved out for certain groups of workers.</p>
<p>Brogdon was undone by a <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/ocasdose.html" target="_blank">dose reconstruction</a> — an attempt by federal health officials to estimate his radiation dose over time. The results of this exercise, overseen by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, inform a “probability of causation” assigned by the Labor Department. If the department decides there is at least a 50 percent chance a claimant’s cancer was caused by radiation exposure, the claim is approved. Brogdon never came close to this threshold.</p>
<p>Nationwide, almost two-thirds of the cases involving dose reconstruction have been rejected by the Labor Department. For Portsmouth claimants, the denials are particularly objectionable given the plant’s history. Dubious recordkeeping practices and erratic radiation monitoring suggest assumptions made by NIOSH for dose reconstructions are way off, they say, leading to unwarranted denial of claims.</p>
<p>“Garbage in, garbage out,” said David Manuta, who was chief scientist at Portsmouth from 1990 to 2000 and now runs a safety consulting firm. “If your input variables are lousy, your output will be lousy.”</p>
<p>Stuart Hinnefeld, director of NIOSH's Division of Compensation Analysis and Support, said the agency only goes forward with a dose reconstruction if it thinks there’s sufficient information to determine the highest possible dose a worker may have received.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t give me any pleasure to turn out a dose reconstruction with a [probability of causation] less than 50 percent,” he said.</p>
<p>For claims alleging injuries from chemicals, linking exposure and disease can be particularly daunting. The burden of proof, some physicians and scientists say, is unreasonably high. For instance, the Center for Public Integrity found that when Labor Department officials ask their staff toxicologist to weigh in on causation because the program hadn’t already accepted a link, she almost never agrees with the claimant.</p>
<p>Officials with the Labor Department’s <a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/">Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation</a> say that both they and NIOSH are following the rules of a program that was never intended to compensate everyone who developed cancer or other diseases. Approvals are higher than initial expectations, they say.</p>
<p>“We have to evaluate the likelihood that this cancer is due to work or not due to work, and … there [are] always going to be people that are going to get an answer that they don’t want to hear,” said John Vance, the program’s policy chief. “It’s the perfect intersection of politics, science, human emotion and all of that. It’s a difficult, difficult situation.”</p>
<p>Some members of Congress are unpersuaded.</p>
<p>“Over the years, [the program] has been plagued with delays and bureaucratic hurdles,” U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, told the Center in an emailed statement. The Labor Department frequently updates its rules, “often adding steps to the process and making it harder to prove a case,” he wrote. The agency&nbsp;<a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-11-18/pdf/2015-27121.pdf">proposed more rule changes</a>&nbsp;just a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>“Too often, workers die waiting for compensation that they never receive,” Udall wrote. “Congress didn’t intend for the … process to be so burdensome.”</p>
<p>He has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/757/cosponsors">repeatedly</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/545/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22energy+employees+occupational+illness%5C%22%22%5D%7D&amp;resultIndex=5">tried to</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/2255?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22energy+employees+occupational+illness%5C%22%22%5D%7D&amp;resultIndex=10">change</a>&nbsp;the way the program operates. Most of the bills he sponsored or co-sponsored fizzled, but last year Congress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ291/PLAW-113publ291.pdf">required</a>&nbsp;the creation of an advisory board for the chemical-exposure side of the program. It’s in “dire need of increased oversight,” he wrote.</p>
<p>The Labor Department expects to choose board members from a nominee list&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/AdvisoryBoard.htm">next year</a>.</p>
<p><strong>‘In harm’s way’</strong></p>
<p>What prompted the compensation program was a scandal decades in the making. At nuclear-weapons sites run by contractors for the U.S. Department of Energy and its predecessors, home to some of the most dangerous substances on earth, officials routinely risked their employees’ health.</p>
<p>Workers were exposed “without their knowledge and consent,” Congress would later&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/theact/eeoicpaall.pdf">determine</a>, “driven by fears of adverse publicity, liability, and employee demands for hazardous duty pay.”</p>
<p>In February 1989, retired admiral and energy secretary designee James Watkins told a Senate committee that the Energy Department was a “mess” and that “problems relating to safety, health and the environment have not only been backlogged to intolerable levels but, in effect, hidden from public view until recently. So we are now paying the price.”</p>
<p>Joy Stokes and Faye Stubbs, who worked as custodians and held other jobs at the Energy Department’s Mound plant near Dayton, Ohio, described episodes they say illustrate a cavalier attitude toward safety.</p>
<p>Stokes said she was ordered to clean a laboratory fume hood — which she later learned was “screaming hot” with radiation — without respiratory or skin protection. As a truck driver, Stubbs hauled containers of solvents and barrels of radioactive dirt and was similarly unprotected, she said. Both say managers played down their exposures and eventually took away their dosimeters — badges that measure personal radiation doses. “We were disposable, I guess,” Stokes said. Both filed unsuccessful compensation claims.</p>
<p>More than&nbsp;<a href="http://www.gao.gov/assets/310/302183.pdf">600,000 people</a>&nbsp;worked throughout the weapons complex during the Cold War. When sick employees filed for workers’ compensation with their state programs, the Energy Department directed its contractors to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/theact/eeoicpaall.pdf">fight the claims</a>. Millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on that effort.</p>
<p>Bit by bit, suppression stopped working. Whistleblowers came forward. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whistleblower.org/">Government Accountability Project</a>&nbsp;and other groups dug into the issue. And elected officials were not happy to hear how the complex had treated the people who made it run.</p>
<p>The legislation that launched the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/progbenefits.htm">Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program</a>&nbsp;passed with bipartisan support, but the use of dose reconstruction to make determinations in radiation cases was included over the objections of some House leaders. Cindy Blackston, who served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee from 1980 to 2007 and closely monitored the program, said the panel expressed concerns during negotiations and “continually thereafter.”</p>
<p>“This is a program to address the fact that we put these people in harm’s way,” she said. “Our position was that dose reconstruction and all that was really just a way to keep from paying people.”</p>
<p>The program has two ways in. One, dubbed Part B, pays $150,000 for radiation-triggered cancers and two lung diseases. Part E, for toxic-exposure claims, pays workers for wage loss and impairment — up to $250,000 — while eligible survivors can receive at least $125,000. Both cover medical costs.</p>
<p>Congress, concerned about shoddy recordkeeping and monitoring, did include a method to exempt certain Part B applicants from dose reconstruction. In cases without enough exposure information, groups of workers can be added to the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/ocassec.html">Special Exposure Cohort</a>, their claims automatically accepted if they develop any of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/ocassec.html#cancers">22 cancers</a>.</p>
<p>Portsmouth is among the four sites Congress put in that cohort — though that doesn’t help the ex-guards with prostate cancer, which is not one of the 22 cancers on the list. Petitions and NIOSH’s own efforts have helped expand the special cohort since then. Certain workers at 80 sites are now part of the group, though claimant advocates say the increase hasn’t resolved all the problems they’re seeing.</p>
<p>Problems, in fact, have been the program’s frequent companion. Congress had to amend it in 2004 to put the Labor Department in charge of all claims when the Energy Department — then overseeing the toxic-exposure arm — managed to process only&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=242576&amp;">5 percent of its claims</a>&nbsp;over those first four years.</p>
<p>Then-Rep. John Hostettler, a Republican from Indiana, held hearings in 2006 after the White House’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb">Office of Management and Budget</a>&nbsp;wrote a&nbsp;<a href="http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju26290.000/hju26290_0f.htm">memo</a>&nbsp;listing ways to “contain the growth” in benefits paid out. The outraged congressman reminded witnesses at&nbsp;<a href="http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju28783.000/hju28783_0.HTM">one hearing</a>&nbsp;that the government was to blame for putting the workforce at risk: “Pinching pennies never looked so inappropriate as it does when addressing the plight of these workers.”</p>
<p>Congressional frustration was also behind the creation of the advisory board to weigh in on Part E, which unlike the radiation-focused Part B has not had such a panel.</p>
<p>“We’ve been asking for it for a long, long time,” said Terrie Barrie, a founding member of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, whose husband worked at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado. “I’m trusting the Department of Labor to take their recommendations seriously, not just blow them off and say, ‘Thank you very much.’ ”</p>
<p><strong>‘Don’t worry, you can eat this stuff’</strong></p>
<p>The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant — in Piketon, Ohio, about 25 miles north of the Ohio River city of Portsmouth — was built by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and began operation in 1954. The 3,700-acre site included three process buildings “comparable in size to three Yankee Stadiums and a football field,” according to the Energy Department, an AEC successor.</p>
<p>The process itself went as follows: Less than 1 percent of naturally occurring uranium contains the U-235 isotope needed to generate power or make bombs. Therefore, it had to be “enriched.” First at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and later at Portsmouth, gaseous uranium hexafluoride was forced through a series of porous membranes to separate molecules containing U-235 from those containing U-238. By the time the product arrived in solid form at Portsmouth, its U-235 content, or assay, was under 3 percent. When it left Building 326 in cylinders, it was weapons-grade: up to 97 percent assay.</p>
<p>The plant, which ceased production in 2001, was operated by a series of contractors: Goodyear Atomic, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin and the United States Enrichment Corporation. In the early 1980s — as tensions escalated between the United States and what was then the Soviet Union — management at Portsmouth sought to professionalize the security force. It hired military veterans with law-enforcement experience and pitted them against the Navy SEALS and the Army’s Delta Force in training exercises.</p>
<p>Charles “Chick” Lawson, who’d been a K-9 officer in the Air Force, was hired in 1984. As Lawson settled into the job, he grew troubled by what he believed to be safety lapses.</p>
<p>When the Blue Goose, for example, would leave Building 326 carrying cylinders of highly enriched uranium — carefully spaced to keep them from triggering an uncontrolled chain reaction, known as a criticality accident — “every criticality alarm we passed we set off,” Lawson said. The alarms would go off again when the truck pulled into Building 345.</p>
<p>Managers claimed these were merely equipment malfunctions, Lawson said. His response: “That’s not a malfunction. Something’s going on over here.”</p>
<p>Several years in, Lawson ran for local safety officer with his union, known at the time as United Plant Guard Workers of America. He won and stayed in the job for a decade, frequently knocking heads with managers.</p>
<p>“When I was hired in ’84, they were telling people, ‘If there’s an outgassing [of radiation], don’t worry, you can eat this stuff. Go home and drink a beer and you can pee it out,’ ” he said. “After I became safety officer I began asking a lot of questions.”</p>
<p>His queries, combined with a chemical accident that sent a fellow guard, Jeff Walburn, to the hospital for 11 days in 1994, prompted NIOSH visits to the plant in 1996 and 1997. John Cardarelli, who held a master’s in health physics — the study of radiation’s effects on the human body — led the inquiry. His task was to determine whether exposures to neutron radiation, a byproduct of highly enriched uranium considered more dangerous than other types of ionizing radiation, posed a risk to workers at Portsmouth.</p>
<p>Management had deemed such exposures&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2640370-Doc-1.html">so insignificant</a>&nbsp;that employees weren’t required to wear neutron dosimeters during the plant’s first 38 years. (They did wear dosimeters that recorded alpha, beta and gamma radiation.)</p>
<p>In his&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hhe/reports/pdfs/1996-0198-2651.pdf" target="_blank">final report</a>, Cardarelli concluded that “under certain conditions an acute exposure to neutron radiation can occur” at Portsmouth, creating a potential health hazard. He highlighted a phenomenon the industry called “slow cookers” — buildups of uranium within the cascade of gas centrifuges used in the enrichment process that gave off excess neutrons.</p>
<p>Cardarelli noted that recordkeeping procedures at the plant made it hard to determine just how high historical neutron exposures may have been. Archive tapes containing older dosimetry data were reused, the data overwritten and unrecoverable. Abnormally high radiation doses were dismissed as anomalies and blamed on “equipment failure.” And doses that couldn’t be linked to a particular person were dumped into a computerized account, known as a “bucket dose” account, with no follow-up investigation. This practice, combined with questionable assumptions about levels of “background” radiation in the plant, “will eventually lead to an artificially low dose history for the facility,” Cardarelli wrote.</p>
<p>&nbsp;A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2640371-Doc-2.html">41-page Lockheed Martin report</a>&nbsp;unearthed in an unsuccessful lawsuit by Walburn found that some officials at Portsmouth believed the plant’s dosimetry database was “corrupt.” In a statement to the Center, the company said it had investigated these and other employee allegations and “could not substantiate” them.</p>
<p>In an interview, Cardarelli, now a health physicist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he thinks “the workers have a legitimate concern that the dosimetry itself may not have been an accurate predictor of their total dose. I believe the slow cooker phenomenon is real. I also believe that people, as a result of the slow cooker, were exposed to neutrons at levels we cannot determine.”</p>
<p>NIOSH’s Hinnefeld said the agency agrees that the highly enriched uranium handled at Portsmouth “would be, probably, a higher neutron-emitter” than material handled at other plants. “We are investigating that issue and it’s likely that we will make some change and actually increase the amount of neutron addition that we are putting in these dose reconstructions,” he said.</p>
<p>Lawyer Frank Gerlach has represented more than 900 Labor Department claimants, including some of the former Portsmouth guards. NIOSH, he said, “relies on known doctored, falsified dosimetry records.” (The agency said it investigated this allegation and concluded that “some apparent anomalies … are not evidence of falsification of dose records, or reasons to disregard the radiation monitoring results.”)</p>
<p>Energy Department records, Gerlach said, indicate the guards were exposed to far less than 1&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/rem-roentgen-equivalent-man.html" target="_blank">Roentgen equivalent man, or rem</a>, per year when in fact “they probably all received 5 to 6 rem per year,” based on employee records reviewed by Lawson while he was union safety officer. The legal limit for radiation exposure in the workplace is 5 rem per year.</p>
<p>Paul Brogdon has had five dose reconstructions. In the first, in 2004, NIOSH noted that the Energy Department showed his “whole body deep dose of record” to be a miniscule 0.078 rem over the entire two decades he worked as a guard. NIOSH, trying to give Brogdon the benefit of the doubt, calculated the dose to his prostate at just over 35 rem. His prostate numbers plummeted in subsequent reconstructions; the probability of causation assigned his claim by the Labor Department fell as a result, from 31 percent to 4 percent.</p>
<p>“They might as well go ahead and say, ‘He didn’t get nothing in 21 years,’ ” Brogdon said.</p>
<p>He and other ex-guards told the Center they often worked 12 hours a day, six days a week in some of the “hottest” areas of the plant — on the roof of Building 326, near vent stacks, for example.</p>
<p>Labor Department ombudsman Nelson, who shares complaints in an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/eeombd/reports.htm">annual report to Congress&nbsp;</a>without taking a position, said he repeatedly hears from former security guards, firefighters and administrative employees that the compensation program understates their exposures, assuming their responsibilities generally kept them away from hazards. At one plant in Iowa, the program’s records suggest that guards had no contact with toxic substances.</p>
<p>“The complaint by the guards is, ‘Where did you get that information from? We were the first responders whenever there was an accident, we were the first to go, we were the last to leave,’” Nelson said. “The belief by these guards is that [the Labor Department] is imagining that they all sat in a guard shack at the front gate somewhere and didn’t move.”</p>
<p>The science on the relationship between radiation and prostate cancer is inconclusive. One&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8274891" target="_blank">study,</a>&nbsp;for example, found elevated prostate cancer death rates among employees of Britain’s Atomic Energy Authority;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8821356" target="_blank">another</a>&nbsp;found excess deaths at the Energy Department’s Y-12 weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A National Research Council committee, however, reported that prostate cancer was “not usually thought to be radiation-induced.” Lifestyle factors such as diet and smoking, as well as family history and race or ethnicity, all can play a role in the development of the disease.</p>
<p>NIOSH&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/irep/comprates092315.pdf" target="_blank">data show</a>&nbsp;that through September 23, 2015, nearly 97 percent of 4,975 claims nationwide relating to cancers of the “male genitalia,” mostly prostate, had been denied by the Labor Department.</p>
<p>“There’s a very high likelihood regardless, with no radiation exposure, that a male is going to get prostate cancer, particularly as he ages,” said Hinnefeld, of NIOSH. To reach a 50 percent probability of causation, a claimant with the disease would have to show he absorbed a higher radiation dose than victims of many other cancers, Hinnefeld said.</p>
<p>Gerlach, the lawyer, doesn’t dispute the science; rather, he challenges the doses NIOSH has estimated for the ex-guards. “They never believe what a claimant says,” he said. Only if prostate cancer spreads to the bone — one of the 22 cancers allowed in the special exposure cohort — does a victim stand to get a claim approved, said Gerlach, who has won several such cases, none involving guards.</p>
<p>Calvin Parker, who joined the security force at Portsmouth in 1979, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in August 2011. His Labor Department claim was denied in March. Parker’s wife, Lisa, keeps a tally of former guards who died from cancer or other causes; the list includes 33 names — “just the ones we know of” — from a force of around 200 at its peak. She counts nine living victims of prostate cancer, all of whom were diagnosed before age 65 and started at the plant between the mid-1970s and the mid-’80s. Across the general population, about six in 10 cases of the disease are diagnosed in men 65 or older,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostatecancer/detailedguide/prostate-cancer-key-statistics" target="_blank">according to the American Cancer Society</a>.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe in coincidence,” said Lisa Parker, who was a guard for part of her 19 years at Portsmouth and received compensation for chronic beryllium disease, a serious lung condition. “The common denominator was the plant. All of us who worked as guards were exposed to highly enriched uranium.”</p>
<p>The prostate-cancer cluster is notable not only for the relative youth of the men at diagnosis but also for the aggressiveness of the disease, Lisa Parker said. Her husband said the level of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, in his blood doubled within two months of his diagnosis. “It’s usually a very slow-acting cancer,” he said. Other former colleagues had similar spikes over short periods.</p>
<p>So far, however, Calvin Parker has been compensated only for solvent-induced hearing loss.</p>
<p>Brogdon, diagnosed with prostate cancer at 59, covets the program’s medical coverage more than the $150,000 lump sum he might get if his claim were approved. When his PSA count goes up, he said, he has to take a shot that suppresses his testosterone levels, saps his energy and causes hot flashes and night sweats — “just like a woman going through the change.” He can’t afford treatments that could mitigate such effects.</p>
<p>“If I had that medical card,” Brogdon said, “I wouldn’t feel like hell all the time.”</p>
<p><strong>Roadblock for claimants</strong></p>
<p>Bob Haller spent 28 years as a custodian, laundry worker and demolition technician at the Mound plant. After developing cerebellar ataxia — a nervous-system disorder that interferes with balance, speech and other motor behavior — he filed a claim with the Labor Department. He and his doctor blamed the disorder on exposure to the solvent trichloroethylene and other substances used at the plant. But he was turned down multiple times.</p>
<p>David Manuta, the Portsmouth scientist-turned-consultant who estimates he has helped several dozen people with their claims, learned the last denial had been based on a report by the agency’s toxicologist, Lynette Stokes. Stokes observed that Haller had suffered since childhood from vertigo and a seizure disorder and deemed it “highly unlikely” that his condition was work-related. The report was 2 ½ pages, including citations.</p>
<p>Manuta also discovered that the Labor Department had received only the first two pages of a 47-page submission by Haller’s doctor; one of the missing pages cited a worker study tying chronic trichloroethylene exposure to ataxia. The denial was reversed — a rarity in cases involving a negative toxicology opinion, advocates say — in January 2014.</p>
<p>The toxicology reports consider exposure-disease links the program doesn’t already accept. They aren’t designed to be a roadblock, but they effectively are, according to a Center analysis of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.</p>
<p>Of the 113 reports Stokes wrote from 2013 to early October of this year, seven found a causal association between exposure and disease — good news for the claimant. All the rest were thumbs down.</p>
<p>Program officials want her to be cautious about declaring that a certain exposure can cause a specific disease. And she is.</p>
<p>Stokes wrote that the body of research showing links between cadmium, a human carcinogen, and prostate cancer is not yet sufficient. By contrast, the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires prostate exams for cadmium-exposed male workers over 40 because of the cancer risks the agency saw when setting&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3136.pdf">a rule</a>&nbsp;for the metal in 1992. (The former Portsmouth guards are among those the department considers potentially exposed.)</p>
<p>Considering the claim of a liver-cancer patient exposed to arsenic, tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene, all three of which are&nbsp;<a href="http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsAlphaOrder.pdf">classified</a>&nbsp;as known or probable human carcinogens, Stokes opined that the evidence any of the substances can target the liver also was too weak. The studies the claimant submitted “support important hypotheses regarding liver cancer,” but “do not establish a causal relationship,” she wrote.</p>
<p>Most strikingly, Stokes declared in 2013 that the evidence that trichloroethylene can cause kidney cancer was not yet strong enough — about two months after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, came to the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(12)70485-0/abstract">opposite conclusion</a>. IARC determined the solvent is&nbsp;<a href="http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol106/mono106-001.pdf">carcinogenic to humans</a>, with kidney cancer as a major reason.</p>
<p>Stokes, whom Labor Department officials would not make available for an interview, subsequently agreed with IARC. When two such claims crossed her desk later, she cited the group in writing that there is indeed a causal association.</p>
<p>But for cancer epidemiologist Dr.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/david-ozonoff/">David Ozonoff</a>, that raises questions about how much evidence the program requires — and why officials bother reviewing the literature if they’re not satisfied until a consensus group such as IARC is absolutely convinced that a substance can cause the disease.</p>
<p>Such pronouncements can take many years, if not decades. Before the announcement in October 2012, the last time IARC weighed in on trichloroethylene was&nbsp;<a href="http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol63/index.php">1995</a>. But even then, IARC considered the solvent a probable carcinogen.</p>
<p>Ozonoff, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health whose research has included trichloroethylene and kidney cancer, is familiar with legal burden of proof from years of testifying as an expert witness. IARC’s 1995 determination strikes him as perfectly adequate for a compensation program that requires claimants prove their exposure was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/PolicyandProcedures/finalbulletinshtml/EEOICPABulletin16-01.htm">at least as likely as not</a>&nbsp;a significant factor in causing, aggravating or contributing to their disease.</p>
<p>“If something is probable,” he said, “that’s already more likely than not.”</p>
<p>Officials with the program disagree. They say the bar must be set higher to accept that a substance can cause a certain disease, at least for the program as a whole. Individual claimants may still prevail if their medical experts make arguments so convincing that they sway the claims examiner or, on appeal, the hearing official.</p>
<p>“You could have 10 studies that all say ‘probable’; well, that doesn’t mean you have causation established,” said Vance, the program’s policy chief.</p>
<p>That’s the reason the Labor Department, though not specifically requiring a certain level of IARC classification to accept cancer claims, relies heavily on the group’s pronouncements. Those decisions will reflect “the agreement in the scientific community,” Vance said.</p>
<p>Dr.&nbsp;<a href="https://casemed.case.edu/fammed/faculty/Karen_Mulloy.html">Karen Mulloy</a>, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has written causation opinions for about a dozen claimants. Her impression as an occupational-medicine specialist — one who has examined many former nuclear-weapons employees — is that the program has set “a higher standard than what Congress had meant.”</p>
<p>Advocates say the causation hurdle is typical of burden-of-proof difficulties they see. Chris Hayes, a lawyer in Tennessee who has represented nearly 1,000 claimants, said it’s harder to prevail in Part E now than several years ago, a contention echoed by others. He suspects a desire for cost control is at work.</p>
<p>“As time has gone on, they have made some concerted effort to sort of close the spigot, if you will,” he said.</p>
<p>Rachel P. Leiton, the program director, said cost isn’t driving decisions.</p>
<p>“My priority is to make sure that we are paying the people that are eligible,” she said. “That’s my only priority.”</p>
<p>Ombudsman Nelson, however, said a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/PolicyandProcedures/finalcircularhtml/EEOICPACircular15-06.htm">directive</a>&nbsp;issued by Leiton a year ago is making claimants anxious. The directive says big safety improvements at Energy Department sites after 1995 make it unlikely that workers “would have been significantly exposed to any toxic agents.” It suggests that claimants would need to muster “compelling data to the contrary,” unless they can show that incidental exposure aggravated or contributed to their illness.</p>
<p>Program officials said in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/owcp/energy/regs/compliance/PolicyandProcedures/ExposureLevels_Memo.pdf">memo</a>&nbsp;explaining the decision that the Energy Department issued an order in 1995 standardizing worker safety and health rules. Agency enforcement actions starting in the late 1980s showed that violations carried risks, the memo added.</p>
<p>But the directive’s premise may be faulty.</p>
<p>In January, for example, the demolition and decommissioning contractor at Portsmouth, Fluor-BWXT, received a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2640385-Fluor.html">violation notice</a>&nbsp;from the Energy Department accusing it of “improper alteration” of radiation-protection records. “Although no individuals received a radiological dose as a result,” the notice said, Fluor-BWXT managers engaged in “willful falsification of documents,” an act that “posed an elevated risk of unplanned radiological exposures to [Portsmouth] workers and the public.”</p>
<p>In an email to the Center, Fluor-BWXT spokesman Jeff Wagner wrote that the company paid a $243,750 fine and dismissed technicians and managers who failed to calibrate radiation monitoring equipment and then “compounded the issue by going back into the records and entering false data that would indicate the equipment was operating within parameters.”</p>
<p>Wagner called the acts “totally unacceptable.” Radiation and chemical exposures remain a worry at the site, where workers are cutting into pipes that in some cases contain hazardous residue.</p>
<p>Faye Vlieger’s lungs were injured in a 2002 chemical-vapor incident at the Hanford site, a former plutonium production complex in Washington state where cleanup has been under way for&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.gov/em/hanford-site">26 years</a>. The Labor Department OK’d her claim in 2009, but under current rules, she’s sure she would have a problem: Given her symptoms, her doctor suspected phosgene — a poisonous gas — but she said she could never get an official answer.</p>
<p>“If my claim was going to go through today, it wouldn’t be approved,” said Vlieger, who helps others with their cases.</p>
<p>Washington Attorney General&nbsp;<a href="http://www.atg.wa.gov/about-bob-ferguson">Bob Ferguson</a>&nbsp;says cleanup workers at Hanford are exposed to noxious fumes and vapors even now. He sued over the matter in September.</p>
<p>“Despite 20 years of study and multiple reports, the federal government has not implemented a lasting solution,” the attorney general’s office&nbsp;<a href="http://atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-sues-federal-government-over-hanford-worker-safety">said in a statement</a>, “and workers continue to get sick.”</p>
<p><strong><em>This story was co-published with <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/nuclear_weapons_plants_are_killing_the_people_who_once_guarded_them_a_center.html">Slate</a>.</em></strong></p>
The Special Response Team at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, in the mid-1980s. Calvin Parker, one of at least nine former guards with prostate cancer, is on the far left in the front row; Jeff Walburn, who was injured in an accident at the plant in 1994, is behind Parker’s right shoulder.
Jim Morrishttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jim-morrisJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsDisease victims often shut out of workers' comp systemhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/18816It&#039;s hard enough for injured workers to win comp cases. It can be nearly impossible for sick ones to prevail -- or even file.Occupational Safety and Health Administration;Occupational safety and health;Trichloroethylene;Social programs;Types of insurance;Employment compensation;Workers' compensation;Asbestos;United States labor law;Actuarial science;Radiation Exposure Compensation Act;Occupational disease2016-01-27T15:00:21-05:002015-11-04T05:00:00-05:00<p>LANCASTER, Pennsylvania — Finding the first bit of evidence that Gene Cooper’s job damaged his brain and destroyed his health was the easy part. That only took his wife four years, eight doctors and at least a dozen tests.</p>
<p>The hard part: Getting his former employer to pay.</p>
<p>Eight years have passed since Sandra Cooper filed a workers’ compensation claim on her husband’s behalf. She prevailed after 4 ½ years of wrangling, when a judge agreed that chemical exposure on the job at a flooring factory was the reason Gene Cooper — a bright father of two with a quirky sense of humor — had transformed into a nursing-home patient who couldn’t speak and sometimes stared into space when his family visited. That was 2012. Sandra Cooper is still trying to get medical bills and lost wages covered today, nearly two years after he died.</p>
<p>The trouble Cooper has had isn’t unusual for this type of case. What’s unusual is that she’s gotten anything out of workers’ compensation at all.</p>
<p>Americans hurt at work have a difficult enough time with the state-by-state system when their injury is so obvious and immediate — such as an amputation — that it can’t be blamed on anything but the job. When it comes to chemically induced illnesses and other job-triggered diseases that creep up over time, according to researchers and the <a href="http://www.dol.gov/osha/report/20150304-inequality.pdf">federal agency overseeing occupational safety</a>, workers’ comp rarely works at all.</p>
<p>“It’s not good, and in many ways, it’s gotten worse,” said <a href="http://workerscompresources.com/?page_id=14">John F. Burton Jr.</a>, a workers’ compensation expert who chaired a national commission on the subject during the Nixon administration.</p>
<p>The difficulty is partly inherent in the diseases themselves. Most that can be triggered by job exposures — from cancers to lung ailments — have other possible causes, too. Genetics. Smoking. Simple bad luck. Workers have to first suspect their job was to blame and then build a case, gathering exposure information, finding medical experts willing to dig for answers. Most people with occupational diseases <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9571523">never file a claim</a>, researchers say.</p>
<p>But state-run workers’ compensation programs have built additional barriers, often at the urging of industry groups.</p>
<p>In most states, proving that there was a workplace exposure, that it is a known trigger of the illness in question and that, in fact, it was as likely as not the cause of the claimant’s problem isn’t sufficient. Claimants must show work was more likely to blame than all possible outside causes their employers suggest. In some states, the burden of proof is even higher.</p>
<p>And at least 11 states, including Pennsylvania, Alabama and Virginia, require most or all sick workers to file claims within several years of their last hazardous exposure, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis — even though symptoms for a variety of occupational illnesses can take far longer to appear.</p>
<p>The denial rate for disease claims in Ohio and Oregon, rare states that track the outcome of such cases, is three times higher than for injury claims.</p>
<p>The insurance industry points to claimant fraud as a&nbsp;<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2000/aug/07/news/mn-109">reason for tighter rules</a>, contending that employees and their doctors too often shift costs into workers’ compensation that aren’t due to work. States, employers and insurers “have to be very careful … in terms of guarding access to the system,” said&nbsp;<a href="http://www.iii.org/media/photos/dr-robert-p-hartwig-cpcu">Robert P. Hartwig</a>, president of the industry-supported Insurance Information Institute.</p>
<p>But&nbsp;<a href="http://coeh.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/leigh.htm">J. Paul Leigh</a>, a professor of health economics at the University of California, Davis, found major costing-shifting in the other direction. A&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15595947">study</a>&nbsp;he co-wrote in 2004, partially funded with a federal grant and cited in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/osha/report/20150304-inequality.pdf">2015 report</a>&nbsp;by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about how the system fails workers, estimated that more than 95 percent of ultimately-fatal occupational diseases are never covered by workers’ comp.</p>
<p>“It was remarkable — unfortunate, actually — the huge disparity between what workers’ compensation paid for and what epidemiological estimates consider are the true deaths attributed to occupational exposure,” Leigh said.</p>
<p>Taxpayers picked up nearly $27 billion in expenses from work injuries and illnesses in 2007 alone through federal programs such as Medicare, Leigh and a co-author estimated in a separate&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22446573">2012 study</a>. The biggest share of the burden fell on the workers and their families: an estimated $125 billion, or half the cost.</p>
<p><strong>‘What’s the matter with Dad?’</strong></p>
<p>Gene Cooper was 48 the day he struggled home from the flooring plant where he worked in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, coughing and coughing. He told his wife he’d had to help clean up a spill.</p>
<p>That was September 2003. The cough was so persistent that Sandra Cooper made him see a doctor, but soon she had other things to worry about. Her husband — a talented investor who was more than halfway done with a master’s in financial planning — was suddenly having trouble with simple tasks.</p>
<p>“By late October into November, he was mixing up gender, losing proper nouns when he spoke,” Sandra Cooper said. “The kids noticed and kept asking, ‘What’s the matter with Dad? What’s going on?’ Really, by Christmas, he was very confused, going to work the wrong time, getting dates mixed up.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what’s the matter,” he told her right after Christmas of that year, teary eyed.</p>
<p>Seven months after the spill, he could no longer work. By 2006, he was in a nursing home, not speaking, his family unable to tell whether he recognized them or not. As his body deteriorated and Parkinson’s symptoms set in, he lost the ability to swallow, and that was how he died in 2014 — choking on the aspirated contents of his stomach. It’s an image his wife cannot get out of her head.</p>
<p>The bills to care for him were so massive — hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth — that they gobbled up his retirement fund, his investments and his Social Security disability payments. Sandra Cooper had to tap their son’s college fund, the inheritance her late mother left her and lines of credit to keep going.</p>
<p>Her initial efforts to find out if work could be the cause of his illness went nowhere. The occupational medicine specialist who saw him in 2005 couldn’t help because Sandra Cooper had no idea what substances were in the spill. Her lawyer did request her husband’s medical and exposure records that year from his employer, Lancaster-based Armstrong World Industries, and came away empty-handed. Armstrong spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said in an email that the company needed a request in writing and did not get one. Sandra Cooper said the company refused to turn over records at all unless she filed a workers’ compensation claim.</p>
<p>Later, OSHA would cite Armstrong for failing to share exposure information when requested in 2015 — a citation the company called minor and said has been resolved. Lawsuits would be filed, alleging that the company intentionally tossed workers’ records into a Dumpster, a claim the company denies. The coroner, after Gene Cooper’s autopsy, would rule that complications from chemical exposure at work caused his death.</p>
<p>But that was all in the future. At the time, Sandra Cooper had nothing to go on to file a claim. Specialists were still struggling to accurately diagnose her husband’s condition, let alone what triggered it. All that was clear was he had some form of dementia.</p>
<p>Then, a doctor filling out paperwork in late 2007 checked a box indicating that Gene Cooper’s medical problems were caused by work. Sandra Cooper took her first step into the world of workers’ compensation, thinking she would finally get some help.</p>
<p>The system is supposed to be faster, cheaper and less adversarial than a lawsuit. That’s frequently not how it plays out in state systems across the country, especially for illnesses. Nor was that the case for the Coopers.</p>
<p>Armstrong filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB976117743538120812">in 2000</a>&nbsp;after a wave of asbestos lawsuits — it once installed asbestos insulation — but has been out of the bankruptcy courts for nine years now. The publicly traded company, which reported nearly $240 million in operating income last year, contested the Coopers’ claim with all the vim of a civil-suit defense.</p>
<p>The company first contended the request for workers’ compensation came after the statute of limitations had expired. When that didn’t quash the claim, Armstrong put more than a dozen witnesses on the stand to make the case that Gene Cooper had not helped clean up the spill, would rarely have come into contact with chemicals at work and was suffering not from solvent-triggered brain damage but simply a non-occupational instance of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, according to the workers’ compensation judge’s summary of the case.</p>
<p>Sandra Cooper had to bring her own medical experts in to testify, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in further costs. The four specialists — two neurologists, a neuropsychologist and a toxicologist — all linked her husband’s dementia and Parkinson’s symptoms to solvent exposure, in part by using brain scans to identify the type of damage. Other witnesses spoke about conditions at the plant, including an Armstrong worker who testified that he saw Gene Cooper coming up from the basement where the spill clean-up was in progress.</p>
<p>The judge, detailing all this in a 96-page decision letter, declared the claim compensable. Gene Cooper had indeed been exposed to hazardous chemicals as a result of the spill — which occurred while the area was left unattended so workers could go to a safety fair — and over the course of a three-decade career with Armstrong, mostly as an inspector, wrote Judge Tina Maria Rago. Those chemicals included a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=172&amp;tid=30">carcinogenic</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18157908">neurotoxic</a>&nbsp;solvent called trichloroethylene. Armstrong “admitted the existence of these chemicals” in the plant after the Coopers’ witnesses testified to it, Rago wrote.</p>
<p>But that 2012 decision was far from the end of it. Though largely upheld by the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation appeal board, the original decision was narrowed by the board’s 2014 finding that the company would not have to pay compensation to Sandra Cooper for the 3 ½ years between her husband’s last day of work and the date she was finally able to file the claim. Until notice was provided, “no compensation was due,” the board ruled.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a forensic accountant she hired to sift through her records testified in July that $364,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses for Gene Cooper — from before and after the contested 3 ½-year period — remained unreimbursed. Large amounts of interest and post-claim lost wages also have not been paid, the accountant testified. Sandra Cooper said it was only in August, years after the decision, that she received any reimbursement for medical costs incurred after the claim was filed.</p>
<p>Armstrong’s Johnson wrote in an email that the company, while unable to speak in detail about a pending case, has “fully complied with the workers’ compensation decision addressing Mr. Cooper’s medical bills.” She did not address the issue of wages but said some of the medical expenses are “under review or in dispute.”</p>
<p>“We recognize and respect that an employee who is hurt or harmed in the workplace is entitled to pursue a worker’s compensation claim. However, if the claim is erroneous or unfounded, the employer has the right, and arguably the duty, to contest the claim, which is exactly what we are doing,” Johnson wrote. “For example, with respect to Mr. Cooper we do not believe the medical conditions outlined in his case were caused by chemical exposure in the Armstrong workplace. That matter … is currently under appeal by both parties.”</p>
<p>Safety, including proper handling of chemicals, “informs everything we do and is our number one priority,” Johnson added.</p>
<p>Word of Sandra Cooper’s battle with Armstrong slowly spread. One by one, people approached her — other sick former workers from that flooring plant. Some of them had Parkinson’s, like her husband. Others had cancer, particularly multiple myeloma, a rare bone-marrow condition&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094509/">some studies link</a>&nbsp;to solvent exposure. Sometimes it wasn’t the workers themselves but their survivors who came to her.</p>
<p>None had filed a workers’ compensation claim for those illnesses. A few had only suspected a work connection; for most, the possibility had never crossed their minds. Now it was too late to file a claim: Pennsylvania’s deadline, set in 1972, is a few months shy of six years after the last on-the-job toxic exposure.</p>
<p>Appellate court opinions suggested the purpose of the cutoff was to “prevent stale claims” and “prevent speculation over whether a disease is work-related years after the exposure occurred,” according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor &amp; Industry.</p>
<p>The former Armstrong workers and their families came to Cooper with the same question: What should they do?</p>
<p><strong>‘Grand bargain’</strong></p>
<p>Workers’ compensation developed a century ago in the country, state by state, as an attempt to fix a broken system. Injured employees rarely prevailed in court, because laws at the time immunized companies from liability if the worker contributed to his injury in any way —&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1888620/">even by slipping</a>. Employers, meanwhile, had to defend themselves frequently enough — occasionally with big-ticket losses — that they were&nbsp;<a href="http://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/05.12.11_szymendera.pdf">anxious about costs</a>.</p>
<p>Workers’ compensation was pitched as a “grand bargain”: Injured employees would get medical and wage assistance without having to prove negligence, while employers would not have to pay for pain, suffering or punitive damages.</p>
<p>This new system wasn’t merely an alternative to lawsuits. It was — and remains — a substitute. With rare exceptions, typically in cases involving a clear intent to harm, the only option for people seeking compensation from their employers for on-the-job injuries or illnesses is workers’ comp.</p>
<p>When workers’ compensation systems were first set up in the U.S., the major known risk an employee faced was traumatic injury. Mine explosions. Train derailments. Machinery malfunctions. Hazards were ever-present: Some 23,000 people died in U.S. industrial accidents&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm4822.pdf">in 1913</a>.</p>
<p>Now, though, deaths from occupational diseases outnumber fatal work injuries nine to one, according to a 2011&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22188353">analysis</a>&nbsp;by Leigh, of the University of California, Davis. But workers’ compensation still handles injuries better than illnesses, said Burton, the workers’ comp expert and a professor emeritus at both Rutgers and Cornell University.</p>
<p>The denial rate is markedly higher for disease claims than for injury claims in the few states that track that statistic. In Oregon, for example, 36 percent of disabling-disease claims were denied in 2014, compared with 11 percent of disabling injury claims. In Ohio, disease claims were denied nearly half the time in 2014, compared with just 14 percent of injury claims.</p>
<p>When workers’ comp does pay for an occupational disease, it’s far more likely to be a condition such as tendinitis or carpal tunnel syndrome than potentially deadly illnesses such as cancer, Leigh found in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15595947">2004</a>.</p>
<p>Rules written decades ago and never changed are part of the problem. At least 11 states, for instance, set the worker’s deadline to file a claim for most or all diseases based on the time elapsed since the last exposure to the hazard — not when the person was actually diagnosed with the illness. In those states, the window generally closes in one to seven years.</p>
<p>Silicosis, a lung disease triggered by the silica dust that can shroud a badly run construction site, typically takes 10 years or more to develop. Bladder cancer, which can be set in motion by coal tar, metalworking fluids and other workplace toxics, usually appears 15 to 40 years later. Mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos, almost always lies latent for decades. Other such examples abound.</p>
<p>The National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws&nbsp;<a href="http://workerscompresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Introduction-Summary.pdf">said in 1972</a>&nbsp;— 43 years ago — that deadlines should be set after employees become aware that they have an occupational disease, given the “substantial lag” that can come between exposure and diagnosis. At that point, about half the states didn’t meet that test.</p>
<p>Iowa is one of the states that still don’t. If workers there do not become disabled or die within&nbsp;<a href="https://coolice.legis.iowa.gov/Cool-ICE/default.asp?category=billinfo&amp;service=IowaCode&amp;ga=83&amp;input=85A.#85A.12">one year</a>&nbsp;of the last “injurious” exposure, or three years if the hazard causes one of the lung diseases categorized as pneumoconiosis,&nbsp;<a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/1991/90-1195-0.html">they’re out of luck</a>. The only exception is for diseases involving radiation, in which case workers are allowed to actually find out that they have a disabling occupational illness before the clock starts ticking.</p>
<p>Paul J. McAndrew Jr., an Iowa lawyer who has represented employees in workers’ compensation cases for 25 years, called the state’s deadline rule “a patent injustice” that requires him to tell very sick people that they have no legal remedy against their former employer. Usually, the people he is able to help file a claim are those still employed at the site that made them ill.</p>
<p>He was part of a brief effort just over a decade ago, when Iowa made changes to workers’ comp, to get the deadline altered. Workers’ advocates proposed to start the clock ticking when the disease is discovered. That idea was immediately batted down, McAndrew said.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“When we negotiated in 2004, the only message coming back from defense side that made any sense at all was, ‘This one is too valuable. We won’t even consider it,’ ” he said. “It’s a well-known cost savings to the insurance industry. That’s what it is.”</p>
<p>Other barriers are part of a more modern effort by states to lower workers’ compensation costs for employers.</p>
<p>“Over the past 25 years, states have made it much harder for both illnesses and injuries to receive workers’ comp benefits,” said&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/leslie-boden/">Les Boden</a>, an economist and a professor of environmental health at Boston University.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bakerdonelson.com/overhaul-of-the-mississippi-workers-compensation-system-05-16-2012/">Mississippi</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/workers-compensation/b/reform-legislation/archive/2012/06/28/louisiana-workers-compensation-law-changes-2012.aspx">Louisiana</a>, for instance, both rewrote their laws in 2012 in an effort to overturn court precedent that rules be interpreted in favor of workers when resolving disputes. Many states have raised the level of proof a worker must meet from essentially 50-50 to a higher standard, usually a preponderance of the evidence, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.northeastern.edu/law/faculty/directory/spieler.html">Emily A. Spieler</a>, a law professor at Northeastern University who once headed the West Virginia workers’ compensation system.</p>
<p>With the waning of union power, there’s been little organized effort to push back, Spieler said.</p>
<p>Preponderance of the evidence is a typical civil-suit standard. Charles Davoli, a Louisiana lawyer who is past president of the Workers’ Injury Law &amp; Advocacy Group, argues that the original intent of workers’ compensation was to make it easier than suing — since employees gave up their right to the higher payouts civil cases can bring. Changing that, he said, “is all about cost mitigation.”</p>
<p>Lawyers who represent companies or insurers see a 50-50 standard as too low for a properly functioning system.</p>
<p>“Because these things are very easy to allege and very difficult to investigate and disprove, I think at least from my perspective, it’s not unfair to have a heighted burden of proof,” said Bill Scherle, a workers’ compensation lawyer in Iowa who largely focuses on defense work.</p>
<p>Some states apply a still-higher standard of clear and convincing evidence, either for all occupational diseases or if the claimant’s condition can be classified as an “ordinary disease of life” — conditions the general public could contract, even though certain jobs can increase the risk of developing them.</p>
<p>Virginia has that type of rule. And with the exception of hearing loss and carpal tunnel syndrome, the state doesn’t define whether a condition is occupational or ordinary, leaving the parties to argue it out in front of the program’s judges, according to the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission.</p>
<p>Douglas Landau, a workers’ compensation lawyer in Virginia, had to prove a client who baked rolls at a middle school — and developed a non-disabling lung ailment after daily exposure to flour dust — had no outside exposure of even a minor nature. He put a witness on the stand to testify that his client did not, in fact, bake the cakes she brought to monthly Elks Lodge meetings.</p>
<p>Landau takes workers’ compensation cases in other states as well but said a lot of clients, once they learn about the difficulties, opt to seek disability help from Social Security instead. The burden of proof makes it “extraordinary difficult” to win an occupational disease claim in workers’ compensation, he said, “even if you’ve only had one employer your entire career and even if the offending toxin or particle can be identified.”</p>
<p>Trey Gillespie, senior workers’ compensation director at the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pciaa.net/">Property Casualty Insurers Association of America</a>, a trade group, agrees that workers face difficulties with proof. He sees lack of medical evidence as the major problem, not the system itself. If you develop cancer and ask your doctor what caused it “quite often, the doctor will say, ‘I don’t know — it could be lots of things,’ ” he said.</p>
<p>“I think the workers’ comp system is prepared to take care of workers that have an illness that scientific research supports … is occupational in nature, but until the scientific research hits that level, then basically the burden really falls upon other private-payer systems or the public-payer system to help employees that have that illness,” Gillespie said.</p>
<p>Some of the people shut out of workers’ compensation by deadlines, rather than medical evidence, have turned to the courts for help — with varying results.</p>
<p>Iowa’s highest court&nbsp;<a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/1991/90-1195-0.html">ruled in 1991</a>&nbsp;that employees cannot collect workers’ compensation for diseases discovered after that state’s deadline, and then&nbsp;<a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ia-supreme-court/1168849.html">ruled in 1998</a>&nbsp;that such workers also could not sue their employers.</p>
<p>But Pennsylvania’s highest court, considering two cases brought by mesothelioma victims, went the other way in 2013.</p>
<p>“It is inconceivable that the legislature, in enacting a statute specifically designed to benefit employees, intended to leave a certain class of employees who have suffered the most serious of work-related injuries without any redress under the Act or at common law,” the majority of the justices&nbsp;<a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/pa-supreme-court/1650758.html">wrote</a>.</p>
<p>In Pennsylvania, if the disease manifests after the workers’ compensation deadline of 300 weeks from the last exposure, an ill worker has no remedy in that system. Therefore, the justices ruled, he or she can sue.</p>
<p>Since July, about a dozen former Armstrong workers — or their survivors — have done just that.</p>
<p><strong>The plaintiffs</strong></p>
<p>Don Roberts worked at the Lancaster plant for 27 years, until downsizing hit in 1997, and was employed at a medical-supplies firm when he began to have balance and memory problems. It was Parkinson’s, a diagnosis that came as a shock seven years ago.</p>
<p>Now 64, Roberts had to take his Armstrong pension early — slicing his payments in half — so he and his wife wouldn’t lose their house. Covering his health insurance cost them about $700 a month for the 3 ½ years before he qualified for Medicare. And in August, to improve his symptoms, he underwent brain surgery that required him to remain conscious while two holes were drilled into his skull.</p>
<p>“It’s just a Band-Aid,” said his wife, Marilyn Roberts. “There’s not a cure for this, not at this point.”</p>
<p>The Robertses are among those suing Armstrong, all of whom are represented by Sandra Cooper’s lawyer, George Chada, a toxicologist-turned-attorney. The lawsuits contend that Armstrong triggered diseases by regularly exposing workers to a product called Safety Solvent. A 1989 Armstrong purchase document and a 2008 fax — turned up as part of Cooper’s fight against the company — both give the product’s components: largely methylene chloride and trichloroethylene with some methyl ethyl ketone thrown in for good measure.</p>
<p>Trichloroethylene is a&nbsp;<a href="http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol106/mono106.pdf">known human carcinogen</a>; methylene chloride is considered a&nbsp;<a href="http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+66">likely cancer-causing agent</a>. Trichloroethylene in particular is associated with a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune/tce_pce.html">variety of ailments</a>&nbsp;— Parkinson’s, liver and other cancers, neurological problems and kidney damage among them. It’s one of the chemicals implicated in illnesses and deaths among people who worked and lived at the contaminated&nbsp;<a href="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune/qa_healthstudyactivities.html">Camp Lejeune</a>&nbsp;Marine Corps base in North Carolina.</p>
<p>The former Armstrong employees worked in their street clothes, which they wore home to be laundered, and they now worry about the implications for their families. The Robertses’ son, Jason, was born with only one kidney and is a co-plaintiff in their lawsuit.</p>
<p>Johnson, the Armstrong spokeswoman, wrote in her email that the company has not seen any evidence supporting “that any of the medical conditions identified in the plaintiffs’ complaints are as a result of their employment at Armstrong.” The company does not use the solvent described in the pending lawsuits, she wrote, “and if we ever used the particular type of solvent to which you refer, it would have been many years ago.”</p>
<p>“In all of our plants, we follow and often exceed all applicable safety requirements, including those relating to protocols for working with chemicals and the use of proper protective equipment,” Johnson wrote.</p>
<p>The lawsuits also contend that Armstrong purposely destroyed medical and exposure records. One exhibit includes an affidavit from an employee who attests to witnessing this last year and a string of photos showing boxes and file folders tossed in a Dumpster. (Cooper filed a lawsuit against Armstrong, too; it focuses on such concealment-of-information allegations.)</p>
<p>OSHA, looking into the dumping allegation because companies are required to share such records with employees when asked, couldn’t conclusively prove what was thrown away. Johnson said the binders and boxes were empty. But OSHA cited Armstrong in September for failing to give medical and exposure records to a former employee’s representative when requested.</p>
<p>Johnson said the OSHA citation involved “a few non-substantive administrative items” and has been resolved. She said the company has turned over tens of thousands of pages of medical and exposure records to the plaintiffs’ lawyer.</p>
<p>Several of the lawsuits involve cases of multiple myeloma,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20833760">linked</a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24026192">some</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10807550">studies</a>&nbsp;to trichloroethylene and methylene chloride. Judy Wendler’s husband, George, who worked at the Lancaster plant for 30 years, died of the condition last year at 65 after a nearly six-year struggle.</p>
<p>Wendler, a registered nurse, had to keep working while caring for him in order to stay insured — she’s still not sure how she managed. Despite the insurance, and Medicare eventually kicking in, she amassed thousands of dollars in credit-card debt to cover his healthcare expenses.</p>
<p>“It just really took a toll on the whole family,” Wendler said. “His bones became brittle from the multiple myeloma; they more or less were eaten away, is what we were told. … But he made himself do things, in great pain.”</p>
<p>Sherry Riley is another plaintiff. Her husband, Jeffrey, who worked at the Armstrong plant from 1986 to 2000, was just 47 when he died five years ago from leukemia. His loss was a devastating emotional and financial hit she is still trying to recover from. She had to borrow money recently to keep her house out of tax sale.</p>
<p>“I’m getting my electric shut off, I’m on food stamps, I’m selling things … I’m trying everything I can,” Riley, 54, said this summer.</p>
<p>Then there’s Michael Moeller, who worked at the Lancaster plant for more than two decades before transferring to other Armstrong facilities. His 2010 death at age 50 was so mysterious that it took the coroner’s office almost 3 ½ years to determine the cause: acute severe hemolysis triggered by trichloroethylene exposure. The chemical set off an autoimmune reaction in which his body attacked his own red blood cells.</p>
<p>“He essentially suffocated to death,” said Stephanie Bernstein, his sister.</p>
<p>At his parents’ house in Lancaster, a photo collage his family made for his funeral shows him as a baby, a child, an adult, always with the same sunny smile.</p>
<p>“It was the worst shock when that coroner called,” his mother, Marie Moeller, 77, said in October.</p>
<p>A few months earlier, just up the street, former workers and spouses filled up the seats in Sandra Cooper’s living room. They talked about conditions in the 106-year-old plant, particularly in the ’80s and ’90s. The stench of chemicals, they said, was ever-present.</p>
<p>Marilyn Roberts turned to her husband and asked, “Don, did you ever have any protection at all?”</p>
<p>“We had gloves on,” he said, pressing one of his hands to the other to try to control the tremors. “That’s all we basically had.”</p>
<p><strong>What’s the fix?</strong></p>
<p>In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws declared that the states’ programs were, “in general,&nbsp;<a href="http://workerscompresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Introduction-Summary.pdf">inadequate and inequitable</a>.” Burton, who chaired that commission, said the states did better for a while — trying to stave off the possibility of federal intervention — but have backslid since.</p>
<p>He doesn’t hold out much hope of reforms to help ill workers in the current environment.</p>
<p>“Politics in many states are pretty conservative,” he said. “I think the problem you’ve got right now is the problem the national commission wrestled with, which is, left to their own devices the states are in a race to the bottom.”</p>
<p>The Insurance Information Institute defends the current workers’ compensation setup. The rules in place, the group says, are necessary.</p>
<p>“Unfortunately, there’s a long history of fraudulent behavior and efforts to shift costs into the workers’ compensation system,” said Hartwig, the group’s president. “In order to keep workers’ comp costs manageable for everyone, it’s important that the system have a very prescribed manner in which eligibility is determined and compensation is made.”</p>
<p>The institute pointed to statistics from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nicb.org/">National Insurance Crime Bureau</a>, a nonprofit that helps fight insurance fraud. Insurers referred about 3,500 questionable claims involving workers’ compensation to the NICB in 2011 and about 4,500 in 2012, according to the group’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nicb.org/newsroom/news-releases/questionable-workers-comp-claims-report">most recently released figures</a>.</p>
<p>But both figures amounted to about 0.1 percent of total workers’ compensation claims and include potential fraud by companies — such as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wral.com/house-weighs-employment-fraud-reform/14773484/">undercounting employees</a>&nbsp;to reduce premiums — as well as workers or doctors.</p>
<p>Texas Mutual Insurance Co., which has 40 percent of the workers’ compensation market in that state and aggressively investigates fraud,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.texasmutual.com/fraud/fightFraud.shtm">found</a>&nbsp;$5.3 million in employer fraud last year, six times the amount of claimant fraud it discovered.</p>
<p>Some health advocates see a&nbsp;<a href="http://apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2014/07/22/15/18/workers-compensation-reform">nationally run system</a>&nbsp;— or at least active oversight from the federal government — as part of the solution to workers’ compensation woes. Indeed, after taking responsibility for administering benefits to coal miners for black lung, the federal government did once contemplate handling other occupational disease claims.</p>
<p>In 1980, the Department of Labor issued an&nbsp;<a href="http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112103609993">interim report</a>&nbsp;suggesting such a move as one of several options to improve a situation in which, the agency noted, people with job-related illnesses rarely received help from workers’ compensation. Social Security and welfare programs were left to pick up costs amounting to $2.2 billion annually, the agency said.</p>
<p>Glenn Shor was one of the analysts working on that report in the agency’s Office of Health and Disability. Nothing ever came of it, he said. After Ronald Reagan was elected, Shor said, the study group was disbanded.</p>
<p>But the interim report outlined ways to make the challenge represented by occupational disease somewhat less daunting, whether in a state or federal system, including better data collection and presumption standards to reduce the difficulty workers have proving the cause of their disease. The report also discussed how to ensure that companies rather than taxpayers footed the bill — for instance, by levying a tax on disease-prone industries.</p>
<p>That’s important not only to make sure ill workers get treatment, said Shor, a member of the occupational health and safety section of the American Public Health Association. It’s about incentivizing companies to reduce health hazards so the illnesses don’t happen in the first place.</p>
<p>“If you don’t have to pay for it,” Shor said, “you’re not going to do much to prevent it.”</p>
<p><strong>A workers’ comp case drags on</strong></p>
<p>Sandra Cooper sat quietly as her lawyer’s voice filled a small Lancaster hearing room in July. George Chada did not hide his frustration.</p>
<p>Robert J. Goduto, the workers’ compensation judge who took over the case after the 2012 decision finding it compensable, had not allowed one of Cooper’s financial experts to testify. When Chada asked that Armstrong be made to disclose more information about its payments related to the claim, the judge’s response was to calmly ask him to sit down. And now, Armstrong’s lawyer was arguing that the appeals board decision from the previous November — the one that said the company would not have to pay “compensation” for the 3 ½ years before the claim was filed — should extend not only to lost wages but also to medical expenses.</p>
<p>Goduto expressed interest in the case law on that point, but he did not entertain Chada’s request to present evidence that the company did not turn over information that could have helped Cooper file the claim years earlier.</p>
<p>Chada jumped up again, outraged. “So you’re going to allow the employer to conceal its notice, and then get a credit for concealing its notice? That would reward a fraud!”</p>
<p>“Please have a seat,” Goduto said.</p>
<p>Two months later, three workers’ compensation judges — Goduto among them — gave a seminar for the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce &amp; Industry. The talk was billed as an opportunity to hear the judges “discuss pointers on how employers can be successful in workers’ compensation litigation.”</p>
<p>Cooper couldn’t believe it when she saw an announcement for the event. Armstrong is a member of the chamber. She filed a pending motion citing this and asking for the case to be reassigned back to the original judge.</p>
<p>Goduto, who represented companies in workers’ compensation matters before becoming a judge, declined to comment. Sara Goulet, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor &amp; Industry, said by email that she could not speak about specific complaints but added that judges’ discussion at such seminars focuses on the process, “not how to win a case.”</p>
<p>Cooper can appeal the issue of the unpaid 3 ½ years to Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court. But she has to exhaust all her appeals within workers’ comp first. She thinks her case shows how, even when a claim is approved, the system benefits employers and insurers because delays primarily harm cash-strapped claimants.</p>
<p>“The longer they drag it out, the longer it takes to get paid,” she wrote in an email, “and the more legal costs I incur.”</p>
<p>It has eaten up her life, this conflict, and forever altered it. She was a high school art teacher, and now she navigates the complex world of chemical exposures and disease causation, helping others just starting down the same road.</p>
<p>Sitting in her living room this summer, she recalled how her husband — back when they were in their 30s or early 40s — would turn to the obituary section of the local newspaper and exclaim that some guy or other he’d worked with had died. Usually the man had just retired, she said.</p>
<p>Only later did the possible connection to work hit her. She’s sobered by the thought that this is a national problem, not just a Lancaster one.</p>
<p>“People, they don’t connect the dots. I mean, people do get cancer. If you don’t know anything about toxicology, and who does, how would you possibly know that [work could be the cause]? You just don’t,” Cooper said. Workers in that situation can’t hold companies to account, she added, “and that’s what they bet on — that people don’t know.”</p>
<p><strong><em>This story was co-published with <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/workers_comp_is_failing_to_pay_victims_of_occupational_disease_center_for.html">Slate</a>.&nbsp;</em></strong></p>
Sandra Cooper at home in Lancaster.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsClean-air advocates upset with EPA ozone decisionhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/18097EPA tightens air pollution standards, but not enough, say environmental groups; measure goes too far, say manufacturers.Environment;United States Environmental Protection Agency;Environmental chemistry;Air pollution in the United States;Disinfectants;Oxygen;Ozone;Clean Air Act2015-10-01T14:34:03-04:002015-10-01T14:34:03-04:00<p>The Environmental Protection Agency <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/ozonepollution/actions.html#sep2015">announced</a> Thursday that the country’s anti-smog standard does not sufficiently protect Americans’ lungs and will be tightened, a move that irked groups on both sides of the debate.</p>
<p>The decision comes after years of wrangling over the national limit for ozone, the lung-damaging gas in smog.</p>
<p>The EPA said it&nbsp;decided to&nbsp;lower the legal ceiling on the amount of ozone permitted in the air from 75 parts per billion to 70, citing "extensive scientific evidence&nbsp;about ozone’s effects on public health and welfare."</p>
<p>After the EPA proposed a threshold in the range of 65 to 70 parts per billion last year, clean-air and health groups had urged the agency to rein in ozone more significantly.&nbsp;Earthjustice, an environmental law firm involved in a 2013 lawsuit that forced the agency to act, was among them.</p>
<p>“This weak-kneed action leaves children, seniors, and asthmatics without the protection doctors say they need from this dangerous pollutant,” David Baron, managing attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement Thursday. “It will allow thousands of deaths, hospitalizations, asthma attacks, and missed school and work days that would be prevented by the much stronger standard supported by medical experts.”</p>
<p>The National Association of Manufacturers, which lobbied hard to leave the limit unchanged, called the decision to tighten the standard “a punch in the gut” because of the cost and economic ripple effects its members fear from tighter pollution controls.</p>
<p>“After an unprecedented level of outreach by manufacturers and other stakeholders, the worst-case scenario was avoided,” Jay Timmons, the trade group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “However, make no mistake: The new ozone standard will inflict pain on companies that build things in America — and destroy job opportunities for American workers.”</p>
<p>The EPA’s independent scientific advisory committee of researchers and doctors has said <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf/AB290E0DB8B72A33852572120055858F/$File/casac-07-001.pdf">since 2006</a> that the standard is too lenient. But when the EPA last lowered the limit, in 2008, officials did not set it within the 60-to-70 parts per billion range its panel recommended. President Barack Obama <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/02/statement-president-ozone-national-ambient-air-quality-standards">told the EPA to hold off</a> in 2011, when the agency was on the verge of trying again.</p>
<p>This time, the EPA faced a court-ordered deadline to make a decision. The American Lung Association and three environmental groups sued in 2013 when the agency had yet to take up the matter as required.</p>
<p>The EPA <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/ttn/naaqs/standards/ozone/data/2001_court_summary.pdf">isn’t permitted</a> to consider cost when it sets the ozone standard, only the effect on public health. Figuring out the most cost-effective way to control smog is supposed to come after the threshold is set.</p>
<p>But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the ozone debates.</p>
<p>Opponents of anti-smog efforts have long argued that stricter rules would wreck the economy, as described in a <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/03/12/16857/rural-utah-dallas-and-la-smog-besets-communities-across-us">Center for Public Integrity investigation</a> into the 44-year history of ozone regulation.</p>
<p>When an area is out of compliance with the standard, state officials must <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/airquality/urbanair/sipstatus/overview.html">come up with a plan</a> to control the <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/ozonepollution/">pollutants that form ground-level ozone</a>, which is subject to EPA approval. Industry groups fear these ozone-reducing efforts will make daily business more expensive and expansions difficult or impossible.</p>
<p>An economic consulting group hired by the National Association of Manufacturers <a href="http://www.nam.org/Issues/Energy-and-Environment/Ozone/Economic-Impacts-of-a-65-ppb-NAAQS-for-Ozone-(NERA).pdf">said</a> in February that the rule would cost the U.S. economy $140 billion a year, with higher compliance costs rippling outward in lost jobs, higher electricity rates and other problems.</p>
<p>Clean-air advocates and the EPA said the dire predictions of economic disaster have never come true, and they doubt this time would be an exception. In September, an economic consulting group hired by Earthjustice <a href="http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/Clearing%20Up%20the%20Smog%20-%209-10-15%20FINAL%20VERSION.pdf">contended</a> that the manufacturers’ ozone-rule analysis “grossly inflated the cost” — in part due to what it called a $70 billion math error — while ignoring the economic value of better health.</p>
<p>The cost of failing to control ozone is measured in medical bills, lost work days and shortened lives, <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/ozonepollution/pdfs/20141125fs-numbers.pdf">according to the EPA</a>. Health groups <a href="http://www.lung.org/get-involved/advocate/advocacy-documents/national-health-and-medical.pdf">urging the standard be tightened</a>, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, pointed to studies that find respiratory problems such as asthma attacks at ozone levels below the 75 parts-per-billion threshold set in 2008. Evidence is also mounting that ozone has problematic effects on the heart, they say.</p>
<p>Ozone-causing pollutants come from a variety of sources, including factories, vehicles, power plants and refineries. But not all are man-made or locally produced. That’s a particular issue for areas in the West dealing with ozone-worsening wildfires and pollution wafting in from Asia.</p>
<p>A new <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2015-303">NASA-led study</a> found that only a quarter of the ozone in California and Nevada in the summer of 2008, a period rife with wildfires, was both local and man-made.</p>
<p>Industry groups have pointed to such “background” ozone when arguing against tightening the standard. Health advocates note that states can ask for an <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/ozonepollution/pdfs/20141203-background-ozone-states.pdf">exemption</a> if they are able to demonstrate that their air-quality violations were triggered by causes such as wildfires; the EPA has said it will coordinate with states to work through these issues.</p>
<p>Efforts to influence the EPA’s decision on the ozone standard ramped up to a fever pitch in recent weeks.</p>
<p>At least 21 groups, some for and some against a stricter standard, met with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget in September to try to sway officials at that agency, which has the power to change proposed rules.</p>
<p>Both the <a href="http://www.lung.org/about-us/our-impact/top-stories/americans-want-stricter-smog-standards-HW-Blog.html?referrer=http://www.lung.org/healthy-air/outdoor/resources/ozone.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/">lung</a> and <a href="http://www.nam.org/Issues/Energy-and-Environment/Ozone/Voters-Polled-on-Air-Quality.pdf?utm_campaign=ozone&amp;utm_medium=nam&amp;utm_source=pressrelease">manufacturers</a> associations released poll results to suggest that Americans are on their side. The two groups also launched dueling ad campaigns, though not exactly on the same playing field: The lung association’s static ads appeared on websites in the Washington area for a cost the group characterized as “low six figures,” while the manufacturers’ multimillion-dollar effort put ads on television in Washington, D.C., and eight states.</p>
<p>One of the manufacturers’ ads focuses on ozone-forming pollutants that&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4685">travel from China</a>&nbsp;to the western United States. Tighter ozone rules won’t hurt China,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqx0v08Z3-k">the announcer says</a>, “but they could cost our country more than a trillion dollars” — that’s the group’s estimate when tallying up the effect through 2040 — “and kill more than a million jobs per year.”</p>
<p>“We reserve this kind of advocacy for the kind of issues that matter a lot to our members, and this is one of them,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “It’s not just us — it’s governors, it’s mayors, it’s other business associations, it’s unions and public officials all speaking up, Republicans, Democrats … that this is probably the wrong rule at the wrong time.”</p>
<p>Paul G. Billings, senior vice president for advocacy and education at the American Lung Association, said his group’s polling in August suggests that more Americans want stricter ozone standards now than last year, despite the TV ads.</p>
<p>“I think the public understands that the vast majority of air pollution is unfortunately homegrown,” he said. “We have the law on our side, we have the science on our side and we have the credibility of health and medical leaders supporting a much more protective standard. What industry is left with is distractions.”</p>
This April 28, 2009 file photo shows smog covering downtown Los Angeles.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsJohns Hopkins terminates black lung programhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/18104Johns Hopkins Medicine permanently discontinues its black lung assessment program in wake of investigation.Johns Hopkins University;Johns Hopkins;Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions;MacArthur Fellows;Navy–Johns Hopkins football rivalry2015-09-30T18:03:14-04:002015-09-30T17:26:20-04:00<p>Johns Hopkins Medicine said Wednesday that it has discontinued its black lung program,&nbsp;the subject of a Center for Public Integrity-ABC News investigation that showed <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/30/13637/johns-hopkins-medical-unit-rarely-finds-black-lung-helping-coal-industry-defeat">how coal companies routinely beat back sick coal miners’ disability claims with help from doctors</a> at the nationally recognized hospital.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins initially <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/11/01/13675/johns-hopkins-suspends-black-lung-program-after-center-abc-investigation">suspended the program</a>, a move that came two days after the 2013 series ran.</p>
<p>“The program has been suspended since November 1, 2013 and, following a thorough review, will not be resumed,” Jania Matthews, a Johns Hopkins Medicine spokeswoman, said in an emailed response to a Center query.</p>
<p>It’s unclear when or why the decision to end the program was made. Matthews did not respond Wednesday to a request for more details.</p>
<p>Miners diagnosed with black lung — an incurable and <a href="http://wvuhealth.hsc.wvu.edu/issues/fall-2013/why-is-black-lung-back/">potentially fatal disease</a> triggered by breathing&nbsp;coal dust — can apply for benefits and medical care through a federal program. But the coal companies liable for those payments, aided by <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/30/13637/johns-hopkins-medical-unit-rarely-finds-black-lung-helping-coal-industry-defeat">doctors</a> and <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/10/29/13585/coal-industrys-go-law-firm-withheld-evidence-black-lung-expense-sick-miners">lawyers</a>, have pushed back to get claims denied, the Center and ABC News found.</p>
<p>The series, “Breathless and Burdened,” which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/04/14/14593/center-wins-first-pulitzer-prize">won a Pulitzer Prize</a>&nbsp;for investigative reporting, prompted&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/07/22/15131/black-lung-claims-1100-coal-miners-may-have-been-wrongly-denied">policy changes</a>&nbsp;by the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/OWCP/OWCP20150812.htm">U.S. Department of Labor</a>&nbsp;and a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/09/29/18095/sweeping-reforms-proposed-black-lung-benefit-program">pending proposal</a>&nbsp;from members of Congress for what they called “sweeping reforms” of the benefits program.</p>
<p>Dr. Paul Wheeler, who headed the Johns Hopkins unit, has retired, Matthews said. Wheeler did not find a single case of severe black lung in the more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which he offered an opinion, a review by the Center and ABC News found. Such a&nbsp;&nbsp;finding&nbsp;would automatically qualify a miner for benefits.</p>
<p>Last year, the Department of Labor&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/07/22/15131/black-lung-claims-1100-coal-miners-may-have-been-wrongly-denied">told approximately 1,100 coal miners</a>&nbsp;that their black lung benefit claims may have been wrongly denied as a result of Wheeler’s readings of their X rays.</p>
A sign stands in front of part of the Johns Hopkins Hospital complex, Tuesday, July 8, 2014, in Baltimore.&nbsp;
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsCommon solvent keeps killing workers, consumers http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/17991Methylene chloride, in products such as paint strippers, has killed dozens of people since 1980 with no action from regulators.Paint stripper;Woodworking;Chlorine;Occupational Safety and Health Administration;U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission;Consumer Product Safety Act;Intoxicative inhalant2015-09-21T12:26:40-04:002015-09-21T05:00:00-04:00<p>Johnathan Welch was 18 and working through lunch when the fumes killed him, stealing oxygen from his brain, stopping his heart.</p>
<p>The chemical linked to his death in 1999 wasn’t a newly discovered hazard, nor was it hard to acquire. Methylene chloride, which triggered similar deaths dating as far back as the 1940s, could be bought barely diluted in products on retail shelves.</p>
<p>It still can. And it’s still killing people.</p>
<p>The solvent is common in paint strippers, widely available products with labels that warn of cancer risks but do not make clear the possibility of rapid death. In areas where the fumes can concentrate, workers and consumers risk <a href="https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/methylene_chloride_hazard_alert.html">asphyxiation or a heart attack</a> while taking care of seemingly routine tasks.</p>
<p>That hazard prompted the European Union to pull methylene chloride paint strippers from general use in 2011. For reasons that aren’t clear, regulatory agencies in the United States have not followed suit — or even required better warnings — despite decades of evidence about the dangers, a Center for Public Integrity investigation found.</p>
<p>A Center analysis identified at least 56 accidental exposure deaths linked to methylene chloride since 1980 in the U.S. Thirty-one occurred before Johnathan Welch died, 24 after. The most recent was in July. Many involved paint strippers; in other cases victims used the chemical for tasks such as cleaning and gluing carpet, according to death investigations and autopsy reports the Center obtained through Freedom of Information Act and state open records requests.</p>
<p>Teenagers on the job, a mother of four, workers nearing retirement, an 80-year-old man — the toxic vapors took them all. A Colorado resident one year older than Welch was killed his first day at a furniture-stripping shop. Three South Carolina workers were felled in a single incident in 1986. Church maintenance employee Steve Duarte, 24, survived the Iraq War only to be killed in 2010 while stripping a baptismal pool in California.</p>
<p>“People have died, it poses this cancer threat … and everybody knows it’s a bad chemical, and yet nobody does anything,” said&nbsp;<a href="http://www.irta.us/resumepage.htm">Katy Wolf</a>, who recommends safer alternatives to toxic chemicals as director of the nonprofit Institute for Research and Technical Assistance in California. “It’s appalling and irresponsible.”</p>
<p>Two Medical College of Wisconsin researchers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~dshuster/MeCl/MeCl%20Tox%20Refs/Stewart_1976.pdf">writing</a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<em>The Journal of the American Medical Association</em>&nbsp;criticized the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency for remaining “mute” on methylene chloride’s ability to trigger a heart attack. Year of publication: 1976.</p>
<p>The EPA says it does intend to take action. It is working on a rule — expected to be proposed early next year — that could stiffen warning labels on paint strippers containing the chemical, add certain restrictions or ban the products. But any regulation would come more than 30 years after the agency first considered such possibilities for methylene chloride.</p>
<p>The industry is lobbying against a rule, saying the chemical already is well-regulated and remains the most effective way to remove paint.</p>
<p>Faye Graul, executive director of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hsia.org/about.asp">Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance</a>, a trade group that includes methylene chloride manufacturers, said the way to stop the string of deaths is simple: “Proper use of the product.” Labels on the cans warn against using in areas that aren’t well ventilated.</p>
<p>The Consumer Product Safety Commission, for its part, denied a 1985 petition to ban the chemical in household products, when the issue was cancer, requiring instead a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1987/Statement-Of-Policy-For-Methylene-Chloride/">carcinogen warning</a>&nbsp;that appears on&nbsp;cans in&nbsp;fine print. And CPSC staff&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2426488-letter-from-cpsc-responding-to-the-cdph.html">shrugged off</a>&nbsp;requests by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2426487-cdph-letter-to-the-cpsc-in-2012.html">California</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2426492-methylene-chloride-cpsc-letter-and-response.html">Washington state</a>&nbsp;officials in 2012 to consider stiffer regulation in response to the recurring deaths, later contending that the problem is an occupational one&nbsp;—&nbsp;even though consumers have died, too.</p>
<p>“To provide information to the public concerning this matter, CPSC has produced a paint stripper pamphlet,” an agency toxicologist wrote to the state officials in letters obtained by the Center.</p>
<p>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&amp;p_id=250">tightened its rules</a>&nbsp;for on-the-job exposures to methylene chloride in 1997. But OSHA standards don’t cover consumers or the self-employed, and many of the recent fatalities happened at sites that are virtually invisible to the agency until there’s a death — inside residential bathrooms where lone workers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/methylene_chloride_hazard_alert.html">strip tubs</a>&nbsp;of old, chipped finishes.</p>
<p>Methylene chloride offers a case study in how products that pose major risks remain on store shelves.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.stuartmstatler.com/index.php/summary-of-experience">Stuart M. Statler</a>, who helped write the Consumer Product Safety Act and served as a Republican commissioner on the CPSC from 1979 to 1986, said too often companies don’t prioritize safety, seeing it as a needless cost. And agencies are unlikely to force the point with bans. He doesn’t see that changing.</p>
<p>“The pendulum has swung so far in the direction of deregulation,” said Statler, now a product safety and regulatory consultant.</p>
<p><strong>‘Too hazardous’ outside controlled settings</strong></p>
<p>Methylene chloride, also called&nbsp;<a href="http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/dcmfaq.html">dichloromethane</a>, is briskly efficient in all that it does. It softens old paint in minutes, allowing the coating to be scraped off. But if its fumes build up in an enclosed space, it can kill in minutes, too.</p>
<p>The California Department of Public Health, in its appeal to the CPSC, said the continuing deaths suggest methylene chloride is “too hazardous to be used outside of engineered industrial environments” — exactly what the European Union&nbsp;<a href="http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/chemicals/files/markrestr/lexdichloromethane.pdf">concluded</a>&nbsp;about the chemical in paint strippers. While these products can be bought at home-improvement and general retail stores across the U.S., the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Documents/MethyleneChlorideAlert.pdf">specialty respirators and polyvinyl-alcohol gloves</a>&nbsp;needed to handle them safely cannot, the Department of Public Health says.</p>
<p>Even workers wearing respiratory protection have succumbed. Levi Weppler, 30, who left a widow pregnant with their first child, was among those found dead with a respirator on, slumped over the Ohio bathtub he was refinishing in 2011. The cartridge-style device he used to filter the air wasn’t enough: Only a full-face respirator with a separate air supply, or exhaust ventilation to remove the fumes, is sufficient, OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/methylene_chloride_hazard_alert.pdf">say</a>.</p>
<p>By 1985, U.S. agencies considered methylene chloride a probable human carcinogen — the Food and Drug Administration banned it in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1989/FDA-Will-Ban-Methylene-Chloride-From-Cosmetic-Sprays/id-4e8ab361bf9e4151c831da547012f306">hairspray</a>&nbsp;as a result. But the rapid-death problem was identified even earlier. In 1976, NIOSH&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/76-138b.pdf">noted</a>&nbsp;that reports of such fatalities dated to 1947, when four men using the chemical for hops extraction were “overcome” and one of them died.</p>
<p>Dr. Kenneth Rosenman, chief of Michigan State University’s Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, helped identify the more recent trend of bathtub fatalities from methylene chloride in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6107a2.htm">2012 paper</a>&nbsp;that has galvanized efforts by public-health officials.</p>
<p>They fear the fume risk isn’t widely known.</p>
<p>“It’s not surprising to the scientists who have studied methylene chloride in paint strippers when used in small spaces, but I think it’s surprising to the worker and consumer who can purchase the product off the shelf,” said&nbsp;<a href="http://www.phi.org/people/?name=robert-harrison">Dr. Robert Harrison</a>, chief of the California Department of Public Health’s occupational health surveillance program.</p>
<p>Methylene chloride exposure triggers regular calls to the nation’s poison control centers. They handled more than 2,700 such cases in the five years ending in 2013, the most recent data.</p>
<p>The number involving inhalation wasn’t recorded, but almost all the exposures were accidental. Hundreds involved children. And about 950 of the exposed people went to the hospital or sought other medical treatment, according to a Center analysis of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.aapcc.org/">American Association of Poison Control Centers</a>&nbsp;reports.</p>
<p>The death toll compiled by the Center, meanwhile, almost certainly is an undercount. Poison control centers don’t hear about all incidents. OSHA tracks workplace fatalities, but not cases involving the self-employed or consumers. And Rosenman is sure the true cause of death for some methylene chloride victims is missed, given the chemical’s ability to trigger a heart attack.</p>
<p>Paint-stripping powerhouse&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wmbarr.com/">W.M. Barr &amp; Co.</a>, an employee-owned company in Tennessee that makes several methylene chloride brands, including ones linked to six worker deaths since 2006, sees the safety issue differently.</p>
<p>Barr’s founder helped the Navy develop the product during World War II to avoid fire hazards after a deadly incident on a ship involving a flammable paint stripper, according to Barr’s vice president of risk management, Mike Cooley. Methylene chloride is nonflammable. Several million cans of paint stripper containing the chemical are sold in the U.S. each year, Cooley wrote in an email to the Center.</p>
<p>“One cannot but help conclude that for the vast, vast majority of consumers, the products were and continue to be safe,” he wrote. “Like many products, there are hazards related to the use of [methylene chloride] paint removers. However when used in the proper setting and as directed, they are not only effective but safe.”</p>
<p><strong>Swift death</strong></p>
<p>Setting aside longer-term health concerns, such as cancer, the danger posed by methylene chloride is its one-two punch when fumes accumulate. Because it turns into carbon monoxide in the body, it can starve the heart of oxygen and prompt an attack. The chemical also acts as an anesthetic at high doses: Its victims slump over, no longer breathing, because the respiratory centers of their brains switch off.</p>
<p>An open flame, meanwhile, can transform methylene chloride to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1038054/">phosgene</a>. That’s the poisonous gas&nbsp;<a href="http://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/phosgene/basics/facts.asp">used</a>&nbsp;to deadly effect during World War I, responsible for more fatalities than chlorine and mustard gas combined. (Whether methylene chloride became phosgene in any of the deaths the Center tracked isn’t clear; full records were not available in all cases.)</p>
<p>The 1986 triple-fatality shows how swiftly death can come.</p>
<p>Several contracting firms were working on projects at a dam pumping station in Laurens, South Carolina. One had employees applying paint stripper to an underground area, described by OSHA in records as a basement and a pumping pit. Those workers managed to evacuate after the fumes built up, but when one man went back in, he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail?id=14215842">overcome so quickly</a>&nbsp;he couldn’t get out.</p>
<p>He died. The emergency medical responder who tried to rescue him had to be hospitalized. Two of another contractor’s employees went through the same exercise, one entering the area to turn on the sump pump and passing out, the other felled while checking on him, according to OSHA&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail?id=734673">records</a>. The first man survived; the would-be rescuer did not.</p>
<p>To top it off, an electrician working aboveground “heard an unusual noise,” according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/accidentsearch.accident_detail?id=734707">OSHA</a>, and died in the basement when he went to see what it was.</p>
<p>Four years ago at a California paint company, Gary de la Peña discovered a co-worker lying unconscious in a nine-foot-deep paint-mixing tank. The man had been cleaning it with paint stripper and collapsed. De la Peña rushed in, pulled off his colleague’s useless respirator and put him over one shoulder to carry him out. That’s all he remembers. Already — in just a matter of seconds — the fumes had overcome him, too.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The man he was trying to save died. De la Peña, now 49 and living in Mexico City, still doesn’t know how he survived. He was in the tank for at least 45 minutes, green foam flowing from his mouth when he was finally pulled out. He had to be resuscitated and was hospitalized for four days, according to a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/citations/Vista_Paint_315526707_Narrative_Summary.pdf">state investigation</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>He wasn’t able to finish his medical treatments before his immigration status forced him back to Mexico. His health has never been the same.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“I guess it attacked my nervous system,” said de la Peña, who knew nothing about methylene chloride until after his brush with it. “It’s a really dangerous chemical.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>Sufficiently concentrated, methylene chloride will kill anyone. But people with heart conditions face higher risks because it doesn’t take as much carbon monoxide to trigger an attack. Smokers can be affected more quickly, too, given their already-elevated carbon monoxide levels.</p>
<p>In one incident, detailed in the 1976&nbsp;<em>Journal of the American Medical Association&nbsp;</em><a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~dshuster/MeCl/MeCl%20Tox%20Refs/Stewart_1976.pdf">article</a>, a 66-year-old retiree had three heart attacks — the last one fatal — that each began as he was stripping a large chest of drawers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“Nobody warned him,” said Rosenman, the Michigan State professor.</p>
<p><strong>What agencies have done — and left undone</strong></p>
<p>Judy Braiman remembers reading about the heart-attack risk in the 1970s, probably in that same&nbsp;<em>JAMA</em>&nbsp;article. Around 1977, her Empire State Consumer Association in New York petitioned the CPSC to require a warning on methylene chloride paint strippers that “particular care … must be exercised by persons with heart problems or impaired lung function” because carbon monoxide would form in the body from use. The CPSC, alarmed,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1978/Paint-Strippers-To-Display-Sterner-Warnings/">announced</a>&nbsp;that its staff was drafting a proposed warning.</p>
<p>Braiman, a former CPSC advisor and president of the since-renamed Empire State Consumer Project, clearly remembers seeing the carbon monoxide cautions appear on cans afterward — only to disappear a few years later. The CPSC never did require them, the agency says.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Today, some labels tell customers with heart problems to check with a physician before using paint strippers. The Center could find none that specifically warned about carbon monoxide or heart attacks.</p>
<p>Alex Filip, a spokesman for the CPSC, said by email that he doesn’t have much information on the agency’s methylene chloride work in the 1970s because the staffers involved are all gone. As to&nbsp;why the commission didn’t consider regulation more recently, he suggested that its hands are tied — something that was not communicated to the state officials in the letters responding to their requests for help.</p>
<p>“One fact that stands out in our early investigation is that the injury and death information indicates that this is largely a workplace issue, which is outside of our jurisdiction,” Filip wrote. CPSC staff tell him their review of&nbsp;epidemiology data&nbsp;found no people who died as a result of&nbsp;using the products as&nbsp;consumers, and they believe the agency's stance on warning labels is "still appropriate."</p>
<p>Yet deaths from the solvent that involve consumers, though far harder to track than worker fatalities, have occurred in the U.S. The CPSC, in fact,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1978/Paint-Strippers-To-Display-Sterner-Warnings/">said</a>&nbsp;in its 1978 announcement of proposed warnings&nbsp;that it was aware of “at least three” heart-attack deaths among people using methylene chloride paint strippers in 1976 alone. In 1990, a&nbsp;coroner blamed the chemical after Julette “Julie” Jenkins, a 28-year-old Ohio woman who had been stripping a desk in her attic, dropped dead on the first floor, teacup in hand. And an 80-year-old man died from unintentionally inhaling methylene chloride in 2013, the poison control center system&nbsp;<a href="https://aapcc.s3.amazonaws.com/pdfs/annual_reports/2013_NPDS_Annual_Report.pdf">reported</a>.</p>
<p>As the CPSC notes, another agency is working on the issue now — the EPA. Paint strippers with methylene chloride are a test case, one of a handful of chemical uses the EPA&nbsp;<a href="http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/riskassess.html">recently assessed</a>&nbsp;in hopes of using the weak Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, to actually control toxic substances.</p>
<p>“About one person per year over the last dozen years or so has died, usually in an enclosed space like a bathroom,” Jim Jones, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said of methylene chloride strippers. “Certainly [that] is what jumped out at us. But when we did the assessment, we also found cancer risks.”</p>
<p>The solvent industry opposes the effort. After the EPA identified methylene chloride in 2012 as a chemical it intended to assess, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance told the agency it was “mystified” by the attention. Methylene chloride “is more than adequately regulated” already,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hsia.org/news/HSIA%20Comments%20on%20EPA's%20Work%20Plan.pdf">wrote</a>&nbsp;Graul, the group’s executive director.</p>
<p>Paint stripper warning labels, in Spanish as well as English, all advise against using the products in poorly ventilated areas, she said in a recent interview. Some give bathrooms as an example.</p>
<p>“There are precautions on how to use it, how not to use it,” Graul said. “Amateurs were taking it and stripping bathtubs with it, with no ventilation, and there were fatalities as a result.”</p>
<p>But a Center review of products sold at 15 home-improvement stores in the Baltimore-Washington region did not turn up any that explained, on the label, the potentially fatal consequences of using without sufficient airflow. The closest to it: that “intentional misuse” — so-called huffing to get a chemical high — could result in death.</p>
<p>Graul said there are products that explain the inhalation risks, although she could not name them — paint stripper manufacturers are not her organization’s primary members. But such a warning is not required, she added. The trade group, which prefers stronger warnings to bans, twice suggested such a move to the CPSC after the EPA began assessing the products.</p>
<p>“They were interested, but … because they couldn’t put any staff on it, they couldn’t make any commitments to do anything,” Graul said of the consumer agency.</p>
<p>A reassuring thought for manufacturers as they wait for the EPA’s proposal is that products are very hard to ban under TSCA. The EPA must prove it tapped the “<a href="http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/sect6.html">least burdensome</a>” option that would be effective; warning labels are one of the lighter alternatives. When the agency tried to ban asbestos under TSCA, the blanket prohibition was overturned in court in 1991.</p>
<p>Asbestos exposure kills&nbsp;<a href="http://wwwn.cdc.gov/eworld/Data/Malignant_mesothelioma_Number_of_deaths_by_sex_race_age_group_and_median_age_at_death_US_residents_age_15_and_over_20012010/799">thousands</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.asbestosnation.org/facts/asbestos-kills-12000-15000-people-per-year-in-the-u-s/">a year</a>. The court loss reverberated.</p>
<p>“EPA has never tried again to ban a chemical on the market,” said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist for the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.edf.org/">Environmental Defense Fund</a>.</p>
<p>The EPA already tried the pretty-please approach for methylene chloride strippers. It met with manufacturers to ask them to voluntarily switch to another substance. The agency got no takers.</p>
<p>“There is nothing as effective,” Graul said. “There are even … two EPA staffers at that meeting who admitted they have old homes and use methylene chloride for paint stripping.”</p>
<p><strong>Lower-risk ways to remove paint</strong></p>
<p>Less-toxic paint strippers have been on the market for years — California authorities&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/ohb/Documents/PaintRemovalPoster.pdf">recommend</a>&nbsp;ones with benzyl alcohol, soy or dibasic esters — but they represent the minority of products.</p>
<p>Wolf, with the Institute for Research and Technical Assistance,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.irta.us/Methylene%20Chloride%20Consumer%20Product%20Paint%20Strippers%20REPORT%20ONLY.pdf">found</a>&nbsp;benzyl alcohol to be a reasonably effective replacement for commercial and consumer furniture stripping because it loosens all the same coatings for approximately the same overall cost. It doesn’t do so as quickly as methylene chloride in some cases. But it doesn’t have the expense of methylene chloride’s OSHA-required protections, she noted.</p>
<p>Graul called Wolf’s 2006 tests “extremely outdated.” The Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance will hire a firm to take a new look at methylene chloride alternatives because California will require it, likely next year. Methylene chloride paint strippers are in the first wave of that state’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/">effort</a>&nbsp;to get firms looking at how to make hazardous products safer.</p>
<p>When foreseeable uses of a product are dangerous, fixing the underlying hazard is much better than warning against those uses, argues&nbsp;<a href="http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/Rachel's%20bio.pdf">Rachel Weintraub</a>, legislative director at the Consumer Federation of America, the group that petitioned the CPSC to ban methylene chloride in household products in 1985.</p>
<p>“What’s more effective in protecting consumers? Is it to blame them and say it’s their fault, not ours, or is it to design the hazard out of it?” she said. “Consumers just assume that a product is safe.”</p>
<p>Swapping one chemical for another is often a hazard trade-off. A methylene chloride replacement used in some paint strippers — N-Methylpyrrolidone, or NMP — faces EPA&nbsp;<a href="http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/riskassess.html">scrutiny</a>&nbsp;as well because&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Documents/nmp.pdf">animal tests</a>&nbsp;have showed reproductive problems and harm to unborn babies.</p>
<p>And benzyl alcohol, recommended because of its lower toxicity, isn’t nonflammable. But it’s a “fairly insignificant” fire hazard, said Guy Colonna, a division manager with the National Fire Protection Association. (Some paint strippers with methylene chloride are flammable, too, due to other ingredients mixed in.)</p>
<p>Sometimes, the alternative that works best isn’t another chemical. Jon Shelton with Seattle Bathtub Guy, a firm that fixes tubs, swears by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.lni.wa.gov/safety/research/files/businessprofilesanding.pdf">sanding</a>. He finds it works quicker than using a chemical stripper, and the potential hazard it creates — dust — is easily controlled by turning on the faucet.</p>
<p>He has no desire to go back to methylene chloride.</p>
<p>“I don’t want anything to do with it,” he said. “I knew if I was going to work with this stuff every day, there was going to be a point that I made a bad decision … and then what do you do when it’s too late?”</p>
<p><strong>Dead at 18</strong></p>
<p>Johnathan Welch was one of the youngest victims.</p>
<p>At age 16, he took an after-school job stripping furniture for a small business near Chattanooga, Tennessee, called Dip’n Strip. Dizzy spells came on some months in. In 1998, he passed out at work and needed medical treatment, according to records later obtained by state investigators.</p>
<p>A 1997&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/93-133/pdfs/93-133.pdf">NIOSH guide</a>&nbsp;for controlling methylene chloride in furniture-stripping shops warned that dizziness was a sign of “high exposure.”</p>
<p>But Johnathan’s mother, Rita Welch, said he hadn’t been warned about the hazards of the methylene chloride in the tank he worked over — the state found no records of such training — so his family didn’t connect what happened to his job. A doctor diagnosed him with sinus problems, and Johnathan kept stripping furniture. After high school, he went full time.</p>
<p>He took to working through lunch to get out faster. On Aug. 18, 1999, the week before he was to start college, the rest of the staff went into an adjoining room to eat while the 18-year-old kept going. Thirty-five minutes later, he was found collapsed over the tank, his hair brushing the chemical mixture that was 70 percent methylene chloride, one burned and swelling arm in the liquid.</p>
<p>Doctors tried to save him, but Johnathan was brain dead. Chemical inhalation, according to their diagnosis, had starved him of oxygen. The next day Rita Welch and her ex-husband agreed to take him off life support.</p>
<p>Sixteen years later, the death of her only child is as raw as a fresh wound. Every August when the anniversary arrives, she said, “I have to take the whole week off of work.”</p>
<p><strong>Who’s responsible?</strong></p>
<p>In the absence of bans or voluntary substitutions, the first link in the chain that ends with customers exposed to methylene chloride is the manufacturers.</p>
<p>The one certain way they can get safety information into customers’ hands is to put it on the can’s warning label. But paint stripper warnings don’t clearly communicate the risk of death.</p>
<p>Take Jasco Premium Paint &amp; Epoxy Remover, a widely available product that felled&nbsp;de la Peña’s co-worker in the paint-mixing tank in 2011. It’s made by Barr, whose other methylene chloride paint remover brands include Klean-Strip and Goof Off.</p>
<p>The Jasco can warns on the front that the contents are poisonous if swallowed, that they can irritate the eyes and skin, and that the vapor is “harmful.”</p>
<p>The instructions on the back of the can warn several times against using in poorly ventilated areas, including bathrooms, but don’t say why — other than the risk of chronic effects, such as cancer. The possibility of death is mentioned only in connection with swallowing and huffing.</p>
<p>To get a more explicit warning about the risks of using the product to strip paint, users have to track down the manufacturer’s&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jasco-help.com/uploads/documents/GJPR10003_SDS-0202-1.pdf">safety data sheet</a>&nbsp;online or find the “<a href="http://www.jasco-help.com/product/premium-paint-epoxy-remover-aerosol">IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTICE</a>,”&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wmbarr.com/ProductFiles/Methylene%20Chloride%20Info%20Sheet%20June%202015.pdf">dated June 2015</a>, on the Jasco website.</p>
<p>The Jasco warnings are typical for the market, according to a Center review of labels on seven other brand lines. Cooley, the official with Jasco’s manufacturer, Barr, said by email that the CPSC had reviewed and approved the company’s labels.</p>
<p>“We strongly believe that the products are safe for their intended uses when the directions and warnings are followed,” he wrote. “Sometimes that means the product should not be used, such as when the intended setting is a room with poor ventilation.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.enge.vt.edu/people/88-donna-riley.html">Donna Riley</a>, an engineering professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University who studies consumer product risks, co-wrote a&nbsp;<a href="http://pro.sagepub.com/content/44/28/778.abstract">2000 paper</a>&nbsp;about warning labels on methylene chloride strippers. They struck her the same way as most consumer-product warnings: “They’re terrible in so many ways. … They aren’t designed with the user in mind.”</p>
<p>What the warning labels are good for, lawyer Jason Rowe says, is limiting liability.</p>
<p>“The warning is very inadequate for a consumer, but it’s got enough room to drive a truck through in a legal case,” said Rowe, who represented the mother of the church maintenance worker who died in 2010. She settled, in part because of the poor track record for the few civil cases decided by judges or juries.</p>
<p>After manufacturers, the next link in the methylene-chloride chain is retail stores. Don’t count on life-saving advice here, either.</p>
<p>After two California workers died in paint-stripper accidents, the state Department of Public Health sent specialists posing as consumers to stores that carry the products. Methylene chloride strippers were more widely available than safer alternatives, they found, and none of the store clerks warned about the fatal implications of improper use.</p>
<p>Some, in fact, said the products posed no danger. The department’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/ohsep/Documents/MeClRetailSurvey.pdf">2013 report</a>&nbsp;quoted a clerk insisting that a brand linked to one of the California fatalities wasn’t deadly: “If it were, it wouldn’t be sold on our shelves.”</p>
<p>After that, the state distributed safety&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/ohb/Documents/PaintRemovalPoster.pdf">posters</a>&nbsp;to stores to put alongside paint strippers. The poster calls strippers with methylene chloride “extremely toxic,” lists necessary safety protections and recommends safer alternatives.</p>
<p>The Center, which did not see similar information in Baltimore-Washington stores, asked Lowe’s, the Home Depot and Ace Hardware whether they post safety warnings elsewhere in the country.</p>
<p>Ace said in a statement that, because it is a cooperative of independently owned stores, locations are not required to post warnings but “many may choose to do so as our retailers are committed to the safety and education of their customers.” Lowe’s would not answer the question, saying instead that it encourages customers to follow manufacturers’ usage recommendations. Home Depot did not respond.</p>
<p><strong>Unsafe workplaces</strong></p>
<p>When products are destined for worksites, employers are the final link in the distribution chain. They have a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/as/opa/worker/employer-responsibility.html">legal duty</a>&nbsp;to provide a safe work environment and must follow OSHA&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=FEDERAL_REGISTER&amp;p_id=13600">rules</a>&nbsp;about air measurements, control methods and respirator use when using methylene chloride. Since that standard went into effect in 1997, OSHA air samples testing positive for the chemical topped the exposure limit nearly 20 percent of the time, a Center analysis shows.</p>
<p>Almost all the companies whose workers died from methylene chloride were found in violation and fined. But the typical penalty came to less than $3,000. Fatal accidents often draw small fines; OSHA chief David Michaels has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=TESTIMONIES&amp;p_id=1062">urged</a>&nbsp;Congress to give his agency’s enforcement more teeth.</p>
<p>Johnathan Welch’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2426495-welch-death-investigation.html">1999 death</a>&nbsp;prompted a fine of $1,508. The Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that the Dip’n Strip had no emergency eye-flushing station, no proof of hazardous-chemical training and no labeling on the tanks to ensure employees knew what they were working with.</p>
<p>Shop owner Larry Coxey, who hadn’t notified TOSHA about the death as required, contended that it wasn’t work-related. He suggested to the inspector that Johnathan could have committed suicide — a claim TOSHA noted in the file but did not accept. The agency sought help from NIOSH, which drew up recommendations for engineering controls to fix ventilation problems at the shop. Estimated cost: about $9,000.</p>
<p>TOSHA didn’t check on the business again until 2006, after Johnathan’s mother insisted. This time, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/establishment.inspection_detail?id=309921450">fine</a>&nbsp;hit $11,300.</p>
<p>Coxey hadn’t installed the controls, TOSHA found. Neither of his two employees had been properly trained about methylene chloride hazards. One, age 24, told the inspector that he would get lightheaded there sometimes and would have to leave the stripping area to feel better. The other, while working without a respirator at a chemical tank, explained his method of avoiding overexposure: to “not breathe when leaning far over the tank.” Air samples showed methylene chloride levels nearly 10 times the federal standard.</p>
<p>The shop, in a rundown block of Red Bank, a city surrounded by Chattanooga, is still operating. Coxey, reached by telephone, gave a deep sigh when asked about the case. He’s convinced Johnathan’s death wasn’t from methylene chloride “because he had an aneurysm.” Told about the diagnosis, Coxey said the death certificate blamed asphyxiation. Told that methylene chloride asphyxiates people at high enough levels, he said he didn’t want to talk about it.</p>
<p>“That’s something I’d just rather forget about,” he said.</p>
<p>TOSHA administrator Steve Hawkins, recalling the case, called it “very upsetting.” The reason the agency hadn’t gone back sooner, he said, is that Coxey had no employees when the death investigation wrapped up. Coxey told TOSHA that he alone would handle the chemical dipping, Hawkins said.</p>
<p>Some people honestly don’t know that methylene chloride is dangerous, Hawkins said. He suspects others don’t want to know. Either way, it’s available in thousands of stores.</p>
<p>“It’s pretty crazy, really,” he said, “the stuff that you can buy.”</p>
<p><strong>A mysterious death</strong></p>
<p>Julie Jenkins’ 1990 death in her Columbus home stumped the coroner. What would cause a healthy 28-year-old to collapse, heart stopped, while walking in her house with a cup of tea?</p>
<p>At some point before, she’d partially stripped a desk in her attic with Dayco Marine-Strip. But it wasn’t until a second-hand furniture dealer suggested to her relatives that the product was dangerous — and they alerted the coroner — that anyone thought about methylene chloride. It’s not a routine toxicology test.</p>
<p>The chemical was in Jenkins’ body. The coroner’s report called the amount “consistent with toxic levels” and declared it the cause of death.</p>
<p>After the family sued, manufacturer James B. Day &amp; Co. disputed that the amount — 2.2 parts per million as measured in&nbsp;her eye — could have killed her. The company told the jury in 1995 that another cause was just as likely, such as a heart attack related to prescription diet pills Jenkins had recently stopped taking.</p>
<p>The jury agreed.</p>
<p>“I still find it hard to believe that the jury would find the warning label to be inadequate … and then fail to find the methylene chloride to be the cause of death, despite the coroner’s testimony and the autopsy report,” Eugene L. Matan, the family’s lawyer, wrote to Jenkins’ parents the following month.</p>
<p>Day dissolved almost a decade later. But Gerald P. Sthay, a lawyer and chemist who was the company’s representative at the trial, remembers the case. In his pre-trial research, he couldn’t find examples of deaths like Jenkins’, which didn’t involve asphyxiation. Such cases would very likely go unrecognized, he knows, but he doesn’t see how the amount in Jenkins’ system could have triggered her death.</p>
<p>“I had no fear of the product myself, having worked with methylene chloride strippers,” said Sthay, now with a healthcare firm. “There’s no product that does what it does as well as it does.”</p>
<p>Claudia Sloan, Jenkins’ oldest sister, hasn’t changed her mind about the case, either.</p>
<p>“I have no doubt that methylene chloride killed her,” said Sloan, who had hoped the trial would lead to&nbsp;better warning labels. “There was nothing wrong with Julie. … She shouldn’t be dead.”</p>
<p>In the intervening time, more than two dozen people died while using paint strippers. Thirteen years after Jenkins’ death, a worker suffered a fatal heart attack OSHA attributed to methylene chloride exposure earlier that day. Twelve years after Jenkins’ death, a man working with Dayco Marine-Strip asphyxiated in an Illinois bathroom.</p>
<p>Seven years after Jenkins’ death, Rita Welch’s son took an after-school job stripping furniture.</p>
<p>Welch, now 59, is haunted by what could have been. If only Johnathan had had training and protective equipment. If only she’d known what he was working with. If only she’d never heard about that job.</p>
<p>If only people working with the same chemical weren’t still dying.</p>
<p>“I don’t want nobody else to go through the hell I did,” Welch said.</p>
<p><strong><em>This story was co-published with <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/09/methylene_chloride_is_a_deadly_chemical_found_in_paint_thinners_why_has.html">Slate</a>.</em></strong></p>
Rita Welch looks at photos of her son, Johnathan. He died on the job at 18 while stripping furniture with methylene chloride.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsOSHA seeks to reduce exposure to highly useful, highly toxic metalhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/17790The agency has proposed tightening the level of beryllium to which workers can be exposed.Occupational Safety and Health Administration;Safety engineering;Metal toxicity;Metals;Industrial hygiene;Aluminium;Process safety management2015-08-06T09:43:15-04:002015-08-05T22:18:21-04:00<p>The metal <a href="http://beryllium.com/about-beryllium">beryllium</a> is an engineer’s dream: Lightweight yet strong, capable of handling harsh environments underwater and out in space.</p>
<p>It’s also a medical nightmare. Minute amounts of its dust and fumes can trigger a disabling, sometimes deadly lung disease. It can cause cancer, too.</p>
<p>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it will <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/08/07/2015-17596/occupational-exposure-to-beryllium-and-beryllium-compounds">propose</a> Thursday to sharply tighten&nbsp;the level of beryllium to which workers can be legally exposed, belatedly responding to decades of studies showing that the current OSHA limit does not protect people’s lungs.</p>
<p>“This proposal will save lives and help thousands of workers stay healthy and be more productive on the job,” Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said in a statement.</p>
<p>This is OSHA’s second attempt at a tougher beryllium standard. It proposed one in 1975, only to see it <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/07/06/17558/after-44-years-halting-progress-workplace-disease">beaten back</a> by the secretaries of energy and defense. Beryllium is a critical component in nuclear weapons, and both agencies argued at the time that the country’s national defense could be compromised by lowering exposures.</p>
<p>But the U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees the nation’s nuclear-weapons facilities, had a change of heart years ago. In 1999, it <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-1999-12-08/pdf/99-31181.pdf">approved rules</a> to require respirator use for its workers and its contractors’ employees when beryllium levels reached 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter of air — one-tenth of OSHA’s current limit, and less than the scrapped 1970s proposal, too.</p>
<p>OSHA’s newly proposed standard, which would apply to an estimated 35,000 workers in a variety of industries, would reduce the current 2-microgram limit for an eight-hour exposure to 0.2 micrograms. It would also mandate medical exams for exposed workers and set down other requirements.</p>
<p>Nearly 100 deaths and 50 serious illnesses could be prevented each year if the rule takes effect, OSHA said. Besides lung cancer, exposed workers risk getting lung-scarring chronic beryllium disease, which is triggered by an allergic reaction to the metal and can kill.</p>
<p>The country has compensated nearly 2,500 current or former nuclear weapons workers who developed chronic beryllium disease, according to OSHA. But the full toll is unclear; beryllium has also been used in products ranging from space telescopes to golf clubs to dental appliances. OSHA believes that about 245 people are diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease each year.</p>
<p>As far back as 1999, as the Energy Department was finalizing its rule, OSHA <a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owasrch.search_form?p_doc_type=UNIFIED_AGENDA&amp;p_toc_level=2&amp;p_keyvalue=1999">said</a> it would update its beryllium requirements. Petitions that year and in 2001 from groups such as Public Citizen and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union urged speedy action. The delays since then are typical for OSHA, which blames <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17518/slow-motion-tragedy-american-workers">long waits for health standards</a> on the process imposed by Congress.</p>
<p>The requirements for issuing a single standard are “onerous and burdensome,” OSHA chief David Michaels said in an interview. Michaels said OSHA had completed some work on the beryllium proposal when he arrived in late 2009, and has prioritized it since then, but only recently cleared the final hurdles.</p>
<p>Industry opposition has <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections">played a role in health-standard delays</a>. That’s <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2099330/">part of the beryllium story</a>, but in recent years, something unusual happened: Two bitter opponents during the 1970s fight — the nation’s primary beryllium product manufacturer and a major union — joined forces to write a model standard in hopes of seeing action.</p>
<p>Materion, once known as Brush Wellman, and the United Steelworkers sent their recommendations — including a 0.2-microgram limit — to OSHA in 2012. Michaels called the collaboration “a historic opportunity.” He hopes it spurs similar efforts in other sectors.</p>
<p>“If the industry and a union came to us and said, ‘We want to help you,’ it would certainly move things much more quickly and we would be able to save far more lives,” Michaels said.</p>
<p>Not all workers who could come into contact with beryllium are covered by the proposed rule. Some exposed to trace amounts in raw materials, such as construction workers using coal slag for abrasive blasting work, were left out. OSHA said it would seek comment on whether those workers should also be included. Michaels said the agency is particularly concerned about people working near blasting, who don’t have the respiratory protection that blasters are required to wear.</p>
<p>OSHA’s Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/doc/accsh/meetingminutes/may2014.html">recommended</a>&nbsp;last year that construction workers be fully covered by the standard. Though it did not follow that suggestion, OSHA said it is seeking information to determine whether to include blasting operations in the standard.</p>
<p>The possibility of inclusion&nbsp;worries a major supplier of coal slag abrasives. The company, Harsco Corporation, met with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget last September, when that agency began vetting the proposed beryllium standard. Harsco said in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/viewEO12866Meeting?viewRule=false&amp;rin=1218-AB76&amp;meetingId=556&amp;acronym=1218-DOL/OSHA">presentation</a>&nbsp;that the construction industry “Should&nbsp;<u>Not</u>&nbsp;be Included in the Proposed Rule.”</p>
<p>Harsco, which declined to comment Wednesday because the proposal had not been issued yet, told the OMB that applying the proposed standard to construction would impose needless costs. Current OSHA rules sufficiently protect construction workers from beryllium in coal slag, the company said, disputing the results of a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/surveyreports/pdfs/263-13a.pdf">study</a>&nbsp;in 2007 that found beryllium above the current standard on one of two days that researchers sampled a blasting operation in Maryland.</p>
<p>Coal slag in blasting is one of the alternatives to silica, which can cause another type of deadly lung disease in workers exposed to its dust. OSHA hopes to finalize its silica standard —&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17518/slow-motion-tragedy-american-workers">40 years</a>&nbsp;after starting down that road — by the end of 2016.</p>
NASA workers inspect one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirrors, which are made of beryllium, a useful but highly toxic metal. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing to tighten the amount of beryllium to which workers can be exposed, after decades of studies demonstrating that the current limit doesn’t protect health.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsHow government, business and labor can better protect workers http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/17614America&#039;s worker protections are weak but don&#039;t need to stay that way.Labor;Art Pulaski;Labor federation competition in the United States2015-07-07T09:17:24-04:002015-07-06T05:00:30-04:00<p>The country’s safeguards against toxic workplace exposures are dangerously weak, but they don’t have to stay that way.</p>
<p>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration takes years, <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17518/slow-motion-tragedy-american-workers">sometimes decades</a>, to develop rules for individual chemicals and other hazardous substances. That’s why most of the agency’s exposure limits <a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/annotated-pels/">haven’t been updated since 1971</a>, and why the vast majority of chemicals have <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17495/tattered-safety-net-workers">no workplace limits at all</a>. It’s part of the reason that an estimated <a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/safer_chemicals/">50,000 Americans die</a> from job-related illnesses each year.</p>
<p>Sweeping changes would require action from Congress, given how courts have interpreted what OSHA must do to set chemical limits. The agency could wait a long time for such assistance — Congress <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections">sometimes intervenes</a> to make the process even harder.</p>
<p>But OSHA, employers and worker advocates can make strides against workplace disease and death right now. Here are some of the ways:</p>
<p><strong>Approach health standards differently</strong></p>
<p>OSHA sets exposure limits one chemical at a time, each with a long-slog rulemaking. As a result, it’s a rare substance that has an up-to-date limit in the U.S., and setting one can trigger “regulatory Whac-a-Mole,” as OSHA chief David Michaels puts it, with some companies turning to substitutes that have no legal threshold.</p>
<p>OSHA already tried updating many standards all at once, in 1989. A federal court ruled three years later that the abbreviated analyses the agency did weren’t sufficient.</p>
<p>But nothing’s stopping OSHA from regulating an entire industrial process, said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/afinkel/">Adam M. Finkel</a>, who directed the agency’s health standards programs from 1995 to 2000. By setting standards for operations such as welding or dry cleaning, OSHA could reduce exposures for a variety of substitutes an employer might use, he said.</p>
<p>He suggested that idea to OSHA in the 1990s, and the agency included it in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=FEDERAL_REGISTER&amp;p_id=24773">list of possibilities</a>&nbsp;released last year in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/chemicalmanagement/">request for help</a>&nbsp;to fix its bogged-down standard-setting process. Regulating chemicals by characteristic — for instance, the type of hazard — is also on the list.</p>
<p>Another thought kicked around over the years: Avoiding long fights by getting industry and labor on the same page. Finkel said he asked representatives from both sides in the mid-1990s whether they’d agree to live with the result if they helped set the ground rules. (Answer: Nope. But he thinks it could work if OSHA championed it.) When the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aiha.org/Pages/default.aspx">American Industrial Hygiene Association</a>&nbsp;got industry and labor groups to the table not long after, participants talked about asking for an OSHA advisory committee — with members drawn from both sides — that would hammer out recommendations for exposure limits in at least some cases.</p>
<p>“You could start with the noncontroversial ones and you’d build confidence in the process,” said Frank White, a senior official at OSHA in the 1980s.</p>
<p>Basing standards on what outside parties can agree on could run afoul of OSHA’s requirement to protect workers from significant risks with the lowest feasible exposure limits. Finkel, now at the University of Pennsylvania, sees a workaround: Make such agreements “enforceable partnerships” instead of standards and hold signers accountable.</p>
<p>There’s also the tack the United Steelworkers and beryllium producer Materion tried for that metal, which can trigger a potentially fatal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/beryllium/be_and_chronic_be_disease.html">lung disease</a>. The two sides&nbsp;<a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usw-and-materion-brush-urge-osha-action-on-beryllium-138964404.html">developed a recommended standard</a>&nbsp;for the substance in hopes of speeding up OSHA’s efforts to enact its own rule. (The agency sent a proposal to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for vetting last September. It’s still in review.)</p>
<p><strong>Work together</strong></p>
<p>Why wait for a rule? The asphalt industry offers a model for cooperating to protect workers in the absence of specific requirements.</p>
<p>As concern heightened that asphalt fumes might cause cancer, OSHA&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/archive/oshinfo/priorities/asphalt.html">proposed a standard in 1992</a>.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asphaltfumes/standards.html">Nothing has come of that</a>. But industry and labor representatives helped fill the gap even though they didn’t see eye-to-eye on the science.</p>
<p>It started with an idea in the 1990s from the National Asphalt Pavement Association: Why not adjust the paving equipment? To introduce a system that could protect workers and be widely adopted, trade group members decided to cooperate with labor and government. Soon, they were meeting regularly to develop paver ventilation systems that would keep fumes away from workers.</p>
<p>“There needed to be a paradigm shift,” said Mike Acott, president of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.asphaltpavement.org/">NAPA</a>, which represents asphalt producers, paving contractors and equipment manufacturers. “I would go to meetings, and it just seemed like we all wanted roughly the same thing.”</p>
<p>Dr. Jim Melius, director of research for the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.lhsfna.org/">Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America</a>, was involved from the start. “The usual approach would be that we would go complain to NIOSH” — the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — “and OSHA and demand that studies be done, and industry would fight that,” he said. “But we thought we could work together. There were some pretty practical, straightforward solutions that could be applied.”</p>
<p>Manufacturers designed engineering controls that NIOSH tested, and by the mid-2000s, virtually all U.S. pavers had such technology to keep fume exposures below recommended levels.</p>
<p>The partnership opened the door to larger, industry-changing collaborations. Among them: development of lower-temperature asphalt mix that’s safer — and cheaper, too.</p>
<p><strong>Use less-toxic chemicals</strong></p>
<p>Workers wouldn’t need so many protections from chemicals, toxicologists say, if the U.S. had a good system for policing what’s safe for use. OSHA standards are the equivalent of chasing horses around the field after a massive barn escape.</p>
<p>“Chemicals need to be tested and they need to be monitored before they enter the market,” said Julia Quint, a toxicologist who ran California’s&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Pages/default.aspx">Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service</a>&nbsp;before retiring in 2007. “Once they enter the market, it’s very hard to control them. … Consumers, workers, some small employers and others assume that they’re OK, why would they be on the market if they’re not OK … and then all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, no, it causes cancer.’”</p>
<p>Reforming the system is a big fight, as the&nbsp;<a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/2015/06/u-s-chemical-regulation-reform-gets-boost-house-passes-tsca-rewrite">battle</a>&nbsp;over the federal Toxic Substances Control Act illustrates. So what can companies do now? OSHA&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/safer_chemicals/">has a guide</a>&nbsp;for firms (and workers) looking for safer alternatives to the chemicals they use, often dubbed “<a href="http://www2.epa.gov/green-chemistry">green chemistry</a>.”</p>
<p><strong>Pick up the pace</strong></p>
<p>Even if new methods for setting health standards catch on, OSHA probably will need to address certain substances one by one. Doing so more expediently is critical.</p>
<p>The court decisions that require substantial analyses before OSHA can propose health rules were largely handed down in the 1980s. The last major one that spoke to the issue came out in&nbsp;<a href="https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/965/965.F2d.962.89-7256.89-7274.89-7355.89-7430.89-7253.html">1992</a>. And yet the agency managed to enact 11 health standards that decade. In the decade and a half since then? Just four, only one of which involves chemical exposure limits. Some of the delays, say former agency officials, are OSHA’s to control.</p>
<p><strong>Educate workers</strong></p>
<p>People who know what’s unsafe can avoid hazards and advocate for their own health. That’s why New Jersey worker-rights center&nbsp;<a href="http://newlabor.org/">New Labor</a>&nbsp;recruited a group of day laborers in Newark to become “safety liaisons” in 2009. The workers trained in occupational safety practices and laws, then built up the courage to demand safe working conditions despite their concerns that speaking out might cause trouble for them.</p>
<p>Safety liaison Selvin Trejo joined the program four years ago, shortly after emigrating from Honduras and starting work in construction. “You begin to learn that you have rights in this country like anyone else,” he said. “That we have a right to dignified work and a dignified salary, and a job that’s free of hazards.”</p>
<p>The liaisons teach monthly safety classes and go to day-labor hiring spots in the mornings to help educate workers on their rights. Liaisons tell their employers and co-workers about the protections they need, sometimes reporting job sites to OSHA or refusing to work when a boss won’t fix hazards. They say they’ve seen results.</p>
<p>“We are the eyes and ears of our own circumstances,” said New Labor Executive Director Lou Kimmel. “So we should monitor them, knowing that OSHA can’t always be there for us.”</p>
Asphalt pavers widen a Washington state highway.&nbsp;Engineering controls developed through an&nbsp;industry,&nbsp;labor&nbsp;and government partnership&nbsp;have reduced fume emissions in the breathing zones of workers by about 80 percent.
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsMaryam Jameelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/maryam-jameelSlow-motion tragedy for American workershttp://www.publicintegrity.org/node/17518An epidemic of work-related disease in America is the predictable result of a bifurcated system of hazard regulation Tragedy;Lung;Slow motion;Occupational diseases2015-06-30T08:35:06-04:002015-06-29T05:00:30-04:00<p><strong>PORT BYRON, New York</strong> — Six weeks before Chris Johnson was born in 1974, the U.S. government <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/1970/75-120.html" target="_blank">issued a warning</a> about a substance that would nearly kill him 30 years later.</p>
<p>The substance was silica, a component of rock and sand that is the scourge of miners, sandblasters and other workers who breathe it in. When pulverized into dust, it can cause silicosis — a scarring of the lungs that leads to slow suffocation — as well as lung cancer.</p>
<p>This was no newly discovered hazard. The ancient Greeks and Romans were <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4261407/">mindful of it</a>. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins launched a <a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/topics/silicacrystalline/endsilicosis.html">national campaign</a> against it in the 1930s after the knifelike particles dispatched hundreds of tunnel workers in West Virginia.</p>
<p>The 1974 warning by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said the workplace exposure limit for silica put people in danger. NIOSH urged the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration to cut the limit in half.</p>
<p>OSHA finally did so in 1989, only to see its work undone by a <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/nengapdxg.html">court decision</a>. It didn’t try again until 2011. In the interim, Johnson became a bricklayer and developed acute silicosis after a five-month job that enshrouded him in dust. He’s 40 and, on paper, can expect to survive less than five years.</p>
<p>As Johnson’s experience shows, inaction has consequences. Silica — which OSHA says threatens <a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/factsheets/OSHA_FS-3683_Silica_Overview.pdf" target="_blank">2.2 million workers, mostly in construction</a> — is a striking example of the government’s failure to properly regulate toxic substances in American workplaces. The silica rule still isn’t finished. If it is enacted despite industry protests, it will be only the 37th health standard issued by the agency in its <a href="https://www.osha.gov/as/opa/osha35yearmilestones.html">44-year history</a>.</p>
<p>It’s an ignominious record given the human and economic costs of work-related disease in the United States. According to a widely cited University of California, Davis,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22188353" style="line-height: 20.79px;">study</a>, an estimated 53,000 people died in 2007 from on-the-job exposures —&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf" style="line-height: 20.79px;">outnumbering</a>&nbsp;those killed in suicides, motor vehicle accidents, falls or homicides. More than 400,000 others got sick. The price tag: an estimated $58 billion. OSHA puts the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/safer_chemicals/" style="line-height: 20.79px;">annual toll</a>&nbsp;at more than 50,000 deaths and 190,000 illnesses.</p>
<p>An 18-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has found that the epidemic of occupational disease in America isn’t merely the product of neglect or misconduct by employers. It’s the predictable result of a bifurcated system of hazard regulation — one for the general public and another, far weaker, for workers. Risks of cancer and other illnesses considered acceptable at a workplace wouldn’t be tolerated outside of it.</p>
<p>For years, the best OSHA has been able to do is set chemical limits so that no more than one extra cancer case would be expected among every 1,000 workers exposed at the legal maximum over their entire careers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for the public are 10 to 1,000 times more protective. The real gap is often worse, a former OSHA official says.</p>
<p>“I can’t see any justification for treating people that differently,” said Adam M. Finkel, who heads the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/afinkel/">Penn Program on Regulation</a>&nbsp;at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and was director of health standards programs at OSHA from 1995 to 2000.</p>
<p>Among the Center’s findings:</p>
<p>• Most of OSHA’s 470 chemical exposure limits are, by the agency’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/annotated-pels/index.html">own admission</a>, grossly outdated and don’t protect workers from a variety of ailments. Cancer, for instance: The agency’s own analyses of 16 substances estimate that cancer risks associated with legal exposures to workers over their careers are as high as six in 10. Analyses of an additional 31 exposure limits <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17495/tattered-safety-net-workers">by the Center and&nbsp;Finkel</a>&nbsp;found cancer risks above 1 in 10 for nearly half of the chemicals.</p>
<p>• The vast majority of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/tscainventory/basic.html">tens of thousands of chemicals</a>&nbsp;made or used in the U.S., including some very common and toxic substances, have no workplace exposure limits. The lung-ravaging food flavoring diacetyl. The widely used herbicide&nbsp;glyphosate, <a href="http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVolume112.pdf">recently named</a> a probable carcinogen by the&nbsp;World Health Organization. The agents in chemotherapy drugs,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&amp;p_id=19566">hazardous</a>&nbsp;to the health care workers preparing and handling them.</p>
<p>• Even apparent success stories — rare cases in which chemical limits were tightened — can be Pyrrhic victories. OSHA’s own calculations suggest, for example, that the cancer risk for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/hexavalentchromium/">hexavalent chromium</a>, a metal used in specialty paints and coatings, was as high as one in three at the limit in effect from 1971 to 2006. At the current, stricter standard, the risk is still as high as one in 22, OSHA acknowledges.</p>
<p>• Sampling for chemicals has fallen over the last three decades as&nbsp;workplaces multiplied&nbsp;but OSHA’s staff levels stagnated. Even so, OSHA still finds exposures above legal limits, a Center analysis found. One in six samples containing hexavalent chromium, taken after the 2006 rule change, topped the limit of 5 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Samples containing lead, a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lead-poisoning/basics/complications/con-20035487">brain-damaging metal</a>&nbsp;that can accumulate on a worker’s clothing and&nbsp;hurt the whole family, have exceeded the limit 40 percent of the time since 1984.</p>
<p>• NIOSH last did a nationwide&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/noes/">workplace exposure survey</a>&nbsp;more than three decades ago because it has not had the funding to update it. Critical information on both old and emerging chemical hazards across industries is missing, putting regulators and researchers at a disadvantage.</p>
<p><strong>A profound toll</strong></p>
<p>Job-related illness is a slow-motion tragedy few seem to understand or acknowledge. Its victims usually die one by one, out of public view, though disease clusters emerge on occasion.</p>
<p>More than 50 cases of bladder cancer, for example, have been&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/12/16/13972/high-bladder-cancer-rate-shrouds-new-york-plant-exposing-chemical-hazards-workplace">tied to a small Goodyear chemical plant</a>&nbsp;in Niagara Falls, New York, far above the expected number in the general population. NIOSH investigators identified the suspect chemical years ago: ortho-toluidine, used to keep tires from cracking. Exposures in the plant weren’t extreme; in fact, they were “well below” the legal limit, the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15459624.2012.693836">investigators reported</a>.</p>
<p>Goodyear, which made changes to its factory after the problem came to light,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2084708-goodyear-statement.html">said in a statement</a>&nbsp;that all but one of the 54 bladder-cancer cases identified through its own screening program involved workers who came to the plant before 1990.</p>
<p>“While the ortho-toluidine exposure levels in the plant have generally been far below the permissible exposure limits, engineering controls were put in place in the 1980s to further reduce levels in the plant,” the company said.</p>
<p>Steve Wodka, a lawyer in New Jersey who represented about half the Goodyear victims in claims settled out of court, said he knows of 62 bladder cancer cases from the plant. He calls that cluster “probably the best example of the inadequacy of the system.”</p>
<p>Ortho-toluidine is in a family of chemicals — aromatic amines — known since the 1930s to cause bladder cancer, Wodka said. Yet its exposure limit of 5 parts per million, adopted by OSHA in 1971, was fashioned only to protect workers from the chemical’s acute effects, not cancer.</p>
<p>“It remains the law of the land today,” Wodka said.</p>
<p>The blight of disease contracted on the job isn’t confined to factory workers. It consumes hairdressers, grocery store meat-wrappers, scientists and people in a variety of other professions. Many are stricken by middle age.</p>
<p>The panoply of illnesses, from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalerts/1bromopropane_hazard_alert.html">nerve damage</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v6/n7/full/nrneurol.2010.80.html">dementia</a>&nbsp;to virulent&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447593/">cancers</a>, takes a profound toll on workers and their families. Careers are lost, finances shredded, marriages tested. In some cases, workers opt for macabre, last-ditch procedures to try to save their lives.</p>
<p>“They basically clean you out like a fish,” cancer victim Mike Dennen, who worked in asbestos-contaminated textile factories, said of his 2013 surgery. “They tell you before surgery you can end up without a bladder, you can end up without your intestines.”</p>
<p>Federal regulators are overwhelmed by the scope of the problem,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/29/17522/campaign-weaken-worker-protections">which didn’t materialize by chance</a>. Congress has exacerbated the situation by refusing to fortify the weak 1970 law specifying what OSHA can do. Trade groups have challenged health standards in court while workers lose their lives. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is a vortex that sucks in proposed agency rules and doesn’t spit them out for months — or years.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.osha.gov/as/opa/michaels_bio.html">David Michaels</a>, head of OSHA since 2009, speaks frankly about the results.</p>
<p>“With a few exceptions, OSHA’s standards to protect workers from chemical exposures are weak and out of date, or simply non-existent,” he said in a recent interview.</p>
<p>He cited as an example the solvent hexane, which can&nbsp;<a href="http://www.epa.gov/ttnatw01/hlthef/hexane.html">wreck the nervous system</a>. OSHA’s exposure limit for the chemical is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_245400.html">500 parts per million</a>, 10 times&nbsp;the level&nbsp;NIOSH says is safe.</p>
<p>“We know workers get sick at levels below 500 parts per million,” Michaels said. “We can’t do anything about that.”</p>
<p>OSHA’s exposure limits almost all date to its founding in 1971, he noted, when the agency adopted 1960s-era voluntary numbers&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3287906">embraced by industry</a>. Few have been updated since, and only those few became full standards with specific technological and medical requirements.</p>
<p>“The law under which OSHA operates … forces us to go through a very, very complex, onerous process for regulating any individual chemical,” Michaels said. “It takes many years and millions of dollars in studies to issue one standard. And that’s why we’ve got only a few dozen standards.”</p>
<p><strong>An ancient hazard</strong></p>
<p>Silicosis and other dust-related diseases, the 1974 NIOSH document reported, “have probably existed since man began to dig into the earth’s crust.” Silica was a cruelly efficient killer of stone-cutters in the 17th century; slicing through the workers’ lungs during necropsy was “like cutting a mass of sand,” a Dutch physician reported in 1672. It silenced 19th-century sandstone masons in England long before they reached old age.</p>
<p>Silica also precipitated America’s&nbsp;worst industrial disaster: the deaths of more than 750 workers — many African-American — who drilled a&nbsp;water-diversion tunnel&nbsp;through silica-rich rock near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, in the early 1930s. Death estimates reached as high as 2,000, but the full count will never be known. Sick workers were booted out of company housing. Some who died on site were carted off to&nbsp;unmarked graves.</p>
<p>Four decades after that, in December 1974, Christopher Scott Johnson was born in Auburn, New York. His life almost perfectly tracks silica’s tortured regulatory history.</p>
<p>The month of Johnson’s birth, OSHA published an “advance notice of proposed rulemaking,” indicating movement toward a new silica standard. That effort fizzled due to a lack of funds, according to the head of OSHA at the time.</p>
<p>Silica-related death and disease continued. As bad as things were in foundries and other dusty, fixed establishments, where workers legally could be exposed to twice the NIOSH-recommended silica limit, construction was far worse. Employers in that sector could subject workers to five times the recommended limit without breaking the law.</p>
<p>That’s still the case.</p>
<p>Johnson landed in the construction category in 1993. He became a bricklayer, also known as a mason, following in the footsteps of two uncles. He crafted sidewalks and floors with bricks and stone, and helped repair and put up buildings.</p>
<p>“I was very happy with my job,” he said in an interview at his home in Port Byron, west of Syracuse. “I felt fulfillment.”</p>
<p>Johnson said he was oblivious to silica’s destructive properties. That didn’t matter until he was assigned a job in Rome, New York, in April 2004. Standing on hydraulic lifts, Johnson and his co-workers at a small contracting firm removed and replaced damaged brick from the façades of three apartment buildings operated by the Rome Housing Authority.</p>
<p>The work, which lasted through September of that year, generated “a tremendous amount of dust,” Johnson said. “You’re in a basket that’s maybe six feet wide and two or three feet deep, so you’re pretty much stuck right there.”</p>
<p>The workers were given disposable paper masks, known by experts to be ineffective against microscopic silica particles. The one half-face respirator on the job had a broken strap, “so we didn’t really use it,” Johnson said.</p>
<p>They had tools to suppress the dust: Their diamond-bladed, 14-inch demolition saws came equipped with hose attachments for “wet cutting.” But the project manager for the housing authority refused to allow the practice, fearing it would “make too much of a mess,” according to an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2083913-johnson-v-rome-housing-authority-netzer.html">affidavit</a>&nbsp;given by a former co-worker in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2095104-chris-johnson-complaint.html">lawsuit</a>&nbsp;Johnson later filed against the authority. OSHA rules, moreover, don’t require it.</p>
<p>Johnson did “about 90% of the saw cutting and grinding on the job,” his former colleague said in the affidavit. “In fact, he was often so covered in dust we nicknamed him ‘Dusty.’”</p>
<p>Jim Baldwin, who joined the housing authority as executive director years later, said he would have allowed wet cutting “because of the danger caused by the inhalation of the fine dust.”</p>
<p>“Not having proper respirators on the job was certainly a factor in the worker’s illness,” he added by email. “For that I would have shut the job down until that equipment was made available and was being used.”</p>
<p>There is no way to know how much silica Johnson inhaled. But the current rule for construction is so weak, even employers that stay within the legal limit can be “sentencing someone to death from lung disease,” said&nbsp;<a href="http://publichealth.gwu.edu/departments/environmental-and-occupational-health/celeste-monforton">Celeste Monforton</a>, a lecturer at George Washington University and a former Labor Department analyst and adviser.</p>
<p>By the time the Rome job ended, “something was not right with me,” Johnson said. He was short of breath, losing weight rapidly, unable to do simple tasks without exertion. “I had no clue what was going on.”</p>
<p>The answer came early in a three-week stay at the University of Rochester’s Strong Memorial Hospital in December 2004. Johnson’s parents drove him there after his right lung collapsed following a biopsy, and further tests showed he had acute silicosis triggered by mixed dust exposure.</p>
<p>He underwent an unusual procedure called a lavage, in which his lung was flushed of sticky material filling up the air sacs and robbing him of oxygen. He stayed on a ventilator for nine days.</p>
<p>“None of the doctors really even knew if he was going to pull through or not,” said his wife, Beverly.</p>
<p>The procedure didn’t help much. Johnson continued to struggle for air as he rested fitfully at home in early 2005. He was a candidate for a double lung transplant, a prospect he found unappealing once he learned the odds of survival: less than half of patients would live five years, and less than a quarter would survive 10.</p>
<p>He opted instead for a second lavage at the Cleveland Clinic in May 2005. This one took. By 2006 his lung disease had stabilized, though it hadn’t been cured.</p>
<p>Internist and lung specialist Dr. William Beckett treated Johnson in Rochester and was so struck by the severity of the young mason’s condition that he co-authored an article about it for a medical journal. In an interview, he noted the banality of the substance that had gummed up Johnson’s lungs.</p>
<p>“This is not an unusual material. It’s not exotic,” Beckett, now affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said of silica. “It’s something that everybody is around, but the people who cut through it or work with it are susceptible to getting disease from it.”</p>
<p>Beckett chaired an American Thoracic Society committee that called for a stricter OSHA silica limit in 1997. To his dismay, the old one is still in place.</p>
<p>“There are many, many, I’m sure, young men in the United States who are doing the same kind of job [Johnson did],” he said, “and probably getting the same kinds of exposures.”</p>
<p><strong>Forty years of futility</strong></p>
<p>OSHA’s 40-years-and-counting quest to keep silica from killing workers is a study in inertia and frustration. The agency tried to tighten exposure limits for silica and 375 other substances in a 1989 rule, but a federal appeals court&nbsp;<a href="http://openjurist.org/965/f2d/962/american-federation-of-labor-v-occupational-safety-and-health-administration">struck it down</a>, saying the analyses OSHA used to justify the rule weren’t detailed enough.</p>
<p>It took OSHA nearly two decades to regroup, even though it deemed silica a regulatory priority in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/topics/silicacrystalline/endsilicosis.html">1995</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://executivebranchproject.com/toxic-sand-oshas-challenge-in-regulating-crystalline-silica/">2002</a>. In the meantime,&nbsp;<a href="http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/about/org/bsc/rocsub/docs/1998/index.html">evidence hardened</a>&nbsp;that silica could cause&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cancer.org/research/acsresearchupdates/lungcancer/new-report-underscores-lung-cancer-risk-from-silica">lung cancer</a>&nbsp;in addition to silicosis.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely any group of workers has felt the sting of lax silica controls more than&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/92-102/">sandblasters</a>, who use pressurized guns to shoot sand at corroded surfaces to prepare them for painting. The sand breaks apart as it strikes metal, creating clouds of dust laced with invisible shards of quartz that scar the lungs.</p>
<p>NIOSH,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/75-120d.pdf">noting available alternatives</a>&nbsp;such as nut shells and sawdust, suggested in 1974 that sandblasting with silica be&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/75-120a.pdf">banned</a>. Britain and a swath of mainland Europe had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/dsg/etools/silica/protect_against/stopsandblasters/stopsandblasters.html">already done so</a>&nbsp;by that point.</p>
<p>But industry groups in the United States, like the euphemistically named Silica Safety Association, composed of purveyors and beneficiaries of sandblasting, lobbied successfully in the 1970s to fend off a ban, predicting economic hardship.</p>
<p>In February 2011, OSHA finally sent a proposed silica rule to the Office of Management and Budget for vetting. It emerged&nbsp;<a href="http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=119957">921 days later</a>&nbsp;in 2013. OMB officials will not say why it took so long; 90 days, plus a single 30-day extension, is supposed to be the maximum unless the rulemaking agency asks for more time.</p>
<p>Apart from trimming the silica exposure limit to the NIOSH-recommended number for all workers, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/factsheets/OSHA_FS-3683_Silica_Overview.html">proposed standard</a>&nbsp;would require employers to control dust with methods such as water or vacuum systems and provide medical monitoring for highly exposed workers. OSHA predicted it would save nearly 700 lives and prevent 1,600 new cases of silicosis per year.</p>
<p>The Labor Department held&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/hearing_schedule.html">14 days</a>&nbsp;of hearings in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 2014. Among the witnesses was construction worker Santiago Hernandez, who’d come to the United States five years earlier from Tlaxcala, Mexico, expecting to find safer conditions.</p>
<p>Instead, he said in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2010-0034-3571">written testimony</a>, “things are actually much worse here than in Mexico. ... The protections you receive here are useless. Employers give you a little paper mask that, when you finish, is just as dirty and dusty on the inside as on the outside.”</p>
<p>Dale McNabb, a tile setter from Warren, Michigan,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2010-0034-3585">spoke</a>&nbsp;of developing “breathing problems at night” in his 20s. “By the time I was 30 I felt it more. I could hear my labored breathing and wheezing, and it shocked me.”</p>
<p>In 2008, when he was 42, he volunteered to use a grinder to remove thinset — a mortar made of cement and sand — from a wall over the course of several weeks. “At the end of the project I was feeling pretty bad,” McNabb testified. Tests showed “shadowing in my pleural membrane so severe that the membrane was almost opaque, and there were several lesions on my lungs.”</p>
<p>“When I get exposed to dust now — and not just silica dust, any dust — it feels like I have a plastic bag around my head and someone’s trying to pull it shut on me,” McNabb said. He got a job as a shuttle bus driver, then in financial services, and is thankful he can work. But the stress that followed his health crisis left a lasting mark. “In the end, silica exposure cost me my job, my health and also my marriage.”</p>
<p>Industry witnesses also shared doleful stories — what would happen to companies if they had to comply with the proposed rule.</p>
<p>The American Foundry Society,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2010-0034-3584">disputing</a>&nbsp;OSHA’s cost estimates, said the standard would eat up 10 percent of the industry’s revenue and “threaten the viability of foundries across the country.”</p>
<p>The American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade group,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2010-0034-3582">said</a>&nbsp;the silicosis death rate has dropped more than 90 percent since 1968. Neil King, a lawyer for the council, blamed newer cases on exposures “that occurred decades ago” and more recent exposures that far exceeded the current limit — something that happens regularly, he said.</p>
<p>And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses, suggested that OSHA ought to take more time on an effort already four decades old.</p>
<p>“We have serious concerns about this rulemaking being rushed,” said Henry Chajet, a lawyer who&nbsp;<a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2010-0034-3578">spoke</a>&nbsp;for the chamber.</p>
<p>Industry groups have kept up the pressure as the rule inches toward final form. That includes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/uscc_silica_rulemaking_post_hearing_comments_8-18-14.pdf">pointed</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/uscc_comments_on_osha_silica_proposed_rule_revised_6-24-14.pdf">comments</a>&nbsp;from the chamber, a lobbying powerhouse&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/">that spent $124 million</a>&nbsp;to press for its members’ interests in 2014 — more than the next four top-ranked groups combined.</p>
<p>OSHA’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/silica_hearing_remarks_perry.html">economic analysis</a>&nbsp;projected that while affected businesses would spend an estimated $664 million annually to comply with the proposal — about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.osha.gov/silica/factsheets/OSHA_FS-3683_Silica_Overview.html">$1,242 for the average workplace</a>&nbsp;— the net benefits would range from about $2.9 billion to $4.7 billion a year, values OSHA applied to avoided disease.</p>
<p>In a congressionally requested&nbsp;<a href="http://ota.fas.org/reports/9531.pdf">1995 review</a>&nbsp;of past OSHA actions, the since-<a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/">dismantled</a>&nbsp;Office of Technology Assessment found that the agency tended to overestimate the cost its health rules would impose on industry — often in a big way.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, in March the Construction Industry Safety Coalition, composed of 25 trade groups, said its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.agc.org/news/2015/03/26/new-study-finds-osha-officials-underestimated-cost-silica-rule-construction-industry">own study</a>&nbsp;concluded that a new silica standard would cost construction companies nearly $5 billion a year — 10 times what OSHA had calculated for that industry. It could be “the most expensive OSHA standard ever for the construction industry,” the coalition&nbsp;<a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=OSHA-2010-0034-4242">warned</a>.</p>
<p>OSHA is undeterred, Michaels told the Center. “President Obama has made it very clear he is committed to getting the silica standard out while he’s president.” A final rule is expected by the end of 2016, a Labor Department spokeswoman said.</p>
<p>But the Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/FY16-LaborHHS-Hoeven-Amendment-Silica.pdf">appropriations-bill rider</a>&nbsp;that would require more study before the rule could be issued, which would put the proposal at the mercy of the next president. And even if the rule is enacted, that may not be the final word. Industry almost always challenges OSHA standards in court, which can delay or overturn them.</p>
<p>Reports from public health officials, meanwhile, show that silica remains a workplace menace.</p>
<p>In 2012 NIOSH researchers said they collected 116 air samples at sites in five states where shale deposits were tapped with the oil and gas extraction technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Vast quantities of high-silica sand are used to hold open fissures underground, allowing the product to flow into wells; the NIOSH team&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2012/05/23/silica-fracking/">found</a>&nbsp;that nearly half the samples were above the current OSHA exposure limit, creating an “inhalation health hazard.”</p>
<p>Almost 80 percent were above the NIOSH-recommended limit — the number OSHA wants to enact.</p>
<p>Another group of NIOSH researchers&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2015/06/15/silicosis-update/">reported in June</a>&nbsp;that silicosis deaths, after decreasing for years, are rising again. Silicosis was listed as the underlying or contributing cause of death for 88 people in the U.S. in 2011,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6405a1.htm">down from 164</a>&nbsp;a decade earlier, but such deaths rose to 103 in 2012 and 111 in 2013.</p>
<p>Those who died during the three-year period included a dozen people younger than 45. Researchers called this “concerning,” saying it suggested that intense exposures, of the sort that sickened Chris Johnson, were occurring. Their data didn’t reflect other illnesses linked to silica, such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney disease.</p>
<p>The five-decade plunge in silicosis deaths cited by trade groups reflects a shift from manufacturing to service jobs, NIOSH said in a statement to the Center.</p>
<p>“That does not mean that the risk for developing silica-related diseases … is acceptable in those that still work in dusty trades,” the agency said.</p>
<p><strong>‘Scott’s not here’</strong></p>
<p>Last summer, encouraged by his tolerable if imperfect state of health, Johnson tried to get back into masonry. The experiment lasted a few weeks.</p>
<p>“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “And then I did try to do a factory job, and that didn’t work.”</p>
<p>A stepfather to three boys, Johnson lifts weights, runs on a treadmill and busies himself with household projects. Six feet tall and 250 pounds, he betrays no outward sign of infirmity. Having settled his lawsuit against the Rome Housing Authority, he’s in decent financial shape and is determined to exceed his predicted life span of 45 years.</p>
<p>Still, Johnson said, “I’m affected a lot by my lungs now. I’m constantly getting sick.” A cold that would sideline the average person for a day or two immobilizes him for weeks. “It puts me right down to where I have no energy,” he said.</p>
<p>But Johnson is grateful to be alive. He’s already had more time than some workers struck with silicosis.</p>
<p>Scott Allen Whipps — like Johnson, a mason — died at 38 in 2006, four years after being diagnosed with the disease. His final months were agonizing.</p>
<p>“He coughed non-stop,” said his mother, Judy Schoon of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. “He coughed up blood. He coughed so much that he’d vomit.”</p>
<p>Schoon and her husband Jim, Whipps’s stepfather, witnessed it all firsthand. They’d taken in Whipps during those last months, and his bedroom was next to theirs.</p>
<p>“The goal was always a lung transplant, but he could never get the infection out of his body, so he couldn’t be considered for one,” Judy Schoon said.</p>
<p>One of his lungs turned gangrenous, and shortly after surgery, his condition deteriorated until his hold on life was “very tenuous,” according to a doctor’s report. Whipps would wake screaming in the hospital for his mother. Doctors tried another surgery to save him, to no avail. He died an hour and a half after medical personnel unhooked him from life support, his family telling him to go where the pain would not follow.</p>
<p>It’s been nine years. Judy Schoon still hasn’t processed her son’s early death. Losing a child, she said, is “unnatural.”</p>
<p>“I wake up sometimes,” Schoon said, “and think, ‘Oh — Scott’s not here.’ ”</p>
<p><em><strong>This story was co-published with <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/06/osha_regulations_of_silica_and_other_substances_they_re_out_of_date_and.html">Slate</a>.&nbsp;</strong></em></p>
Jim Morrishttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jim-morrisJamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkinsMaryam Jameelhttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/maryam-jameel‘Imagine your lungs being coated in cement’http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/17536Luzaich bio2015-06-29T05:00:01-04:002015-06-29T05:00:00-04:00<!DOCTYPE html>
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<p><strong>Rick Luzaich, 62, insurance salesman whose first job was in a machine shop</strong></p>
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<div class="caption">Rick and Jennifer Luzaich in a happy moment. Rick, 62, was diagnosed last year with mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer triggered by asbestos exposure. Courtesy of Jennifer Luzaich.</div>
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</style><p>Rick Luzaich took the job out of high school — two years grinding parts in a Minnesota machine shop. A career in business management and other white-collar jobs followed, his days as a grinder fading into the distance.</p>
<p>What he didn’t know then or for many years afterward was just what he’d inhaled during that short stint doing blue-collar work.</p>
<p>He was in his late 50s, living outside Minneapolis, when he began feeling short-winded and ill. Heart trouble, doctors thought at first. Last year, he and wife Jennifer found out what really ailed him:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cancer.gov/types/mesothelioma">mesothelioma</a>, an aggressive cancer&nbsp;<a href="http://www2.epa.gov/region8/asbestos-health-risks">triggered</a>&nbsp;by exposure to asbestos.</p>
<p>Asbestos is a mineral that can be processed into&nbsp;heat-resistant fluffy fibers, an excellent insulator but hazardous to health. Companies put asbestos into&nbsp;<a href="http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/asbestos/products/">all sorts of products for decades</a>, in some cases before and&nbsp;<a href="http://http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4090870/">in other cases after</a>&nbsp;they knew the risks involved. Items ranged from widely-installed insulation to firefighters’ protective gear. Also on the list:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wbjournal.com/article/20140817/PRINTEDITION/308149977/saint-gobain-at-center-of-lawsuit-over-asbestos-exposure">grinding wheels</a>.</p>
<p>Rick, now 62,&nbsp;said he beat out hundreds of candidates for that grinding job and was thrilled by the good pay.</p>
<p>“Little did I know that the whole time I was working there, I was killing myself,” he said.</p>
<p>Mesothelioma,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/asbestos/asbestos/health_effects/">one of several diseases</a>&nbsp;asbestos can set in motion, is a cancer that takes its time.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/hpcd/cdee/occhealth/indicators/mesothelioma.html">Decades can pass</a>&nbsp;before symptoms appear.</p>
<p>Construction workers and people employed at shipyards, chemical plants and refineries have been&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2008-143/pdfs/2008-143.pdf">among the worst hit</a>&nbsp;in the U.S., according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, known as NIOSH. The federal government put&nbsp;<a href="http://www2.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos">some limits</a>&nbsp;on asbestos usage in the 1970s, but the substance is&nbsp;<a href="http://www2.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos#notbanned">not fully banned</a>.</p>
<p>More than 26,000 people died of malignant mesothelioma between 2001 and 2010, according to NIOSH’s&nbsp;<a href="http://wwwn.cdc.gov/eworld/Data/Malignant_mesothelioma_Number_of_deaths_by_sex_race_age_group_and_median_age_at_death_US_residents_age_15_and_over_20012010/799">most recent tally</a>. Annual deaths rose from 2,500 to 2,700 during that period.</p>
<p>Robert E. Shuttlesworth, a Houston lawyer who helped represent the Luzaichs in lawsuits against manufacturers, usually sees clients in their 60s and 70s who were exposed 40 or more years ago. Some, however, are younger. Many worked in industrial settings; others were exposed when their spouses or parents brought the often-invisible fibers home on their clothes, or when companies near them disposed of asbestos improperly.</p>
<p>“There’s places in Texas where they closed down the plant, they just bulldozed it, and you get these mounds of asbestos, … nothing but an asbestos hill,” Shuttlesworth said.</p>
<p>In cases of mesothelioma, asbestos fibers have usually damaged cells in the lining around the lungs.</p>
<p>“Imagine your lungs being coated in cement and not being able to be used. That’s what I have,” Rick Luzaich said. “It’s the left lung. Now, lately, just lately, it’s spread to the right lung. … Feels like you’re trying to run up the stairs breathing through a straw. That’s the feeling. And all the time — not just sometime,&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;the time.”</p>
<p>He and Jennifer, 48, married in 2007 and were an active couple, boating and exercising. That’s out of the question now. So is paid employment — dealing with mesothelioma is a full-time job for them both. Rick stopped selling insurance last year as pain and fatigue overcame him. After he endured four rounds of chemotherapy she feared would kill him, Jennifer left her job, too.</p>
<p>They’ve pieced some financial help together like a patchwork quilt. Rick now gets federal disability payments. The lawsuits against several manufacturers of products with asbestos were “resolved,” said another of their lawyers, Ross Stomel. And friends organized a fundraiser last year. But big, uncovered medical expenses paired with the regular costs of everyday life have left their finances in “horrible” shape, Jennifer said.</p>
<p>She tries to keep her spirits up. She cares for Rick. She raises her children, ages 11 and 12. She researches clinical trials and helped him enroll in two, a way to hold onto hope.</p>
<p>Over it all hangs a terrible question.</p>
<p>“Every day you wake up and wonder, how long is he going to have?” she said.</p>
Jamie Smith Hopkinshttps://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/jamie-smith-hopkins